Since the discovery of WikiLeaks as a global political figure and force to reckon, the founder, Julian Assange has been marked as both polarizing and controversial figure. Julians fans call him the freedom fighter while some call him the whistleblower who has faced the global world leaders and superpowers through exposing their corrupt deals and war crimes. Some of Julians distracters allude to the fact that he takes advantage of the vast powers that WikiLeaks has acquired as being the staunch ally of the American pawn of Kremlin and Vladimir Putin.
The question as to whether or not, the Wiki leaks founder, Julian Assange, whose enterprise is credited with the release of thousands of classified information contained in confidential documents from countries across the world, is a villain or a hero relies solely on the political opinions of the observers. For those who share in the belief of transparency and democracy, as well as good governance and freedom of publishing or speech, Julian Assange remains a celebrated hero. To the opponents of these processes and those who share in the belief that governments have to be forever secretive would regard Assange a villain. Assange pits himself as a believer in the ideals that led to the establishment of the United States of America as a great nation; Assange actions couldnt be more heroic (Scott, 149). He is seen as a fighter who strives to keep the average American, and citizens at large, informed of the corrupt deals within their respective governments, staging a fight for the restoration of normalcy and sobriety in governance and at the same time championing for the mainstream press to bring to a stop, the support they bestow to governments and their views on everything pro-government.
Some opponent of the Assanges ideas has come up with a popular notion that Assange is fighting the United States Government. They go ahead to pose the question that if indeed he is not fighting the United States, then what in the world is he up to? What if he is fighting for the mainstream media to report more than a side of the story? It is however surprising to note that the same mainstream media that Assange seems to fight vehemently for deliberately and out-rightly decline to acknowledge the legitimacy of Assange as either a journalist or a publisher (Scott, 152). It is on record that one of the top committees on the freedom of the press known as the Overseas Press Club of the Americas based in New York declared that Julian was not one of them and was serving self-interest.
Any sane individual would find such a declaration outrageous and odd, as it is the duty of the press to inform the public, at all times, of the wrongs and good the government does, a fact that Assange seems to pursue, albeit in ways that are not conventional. For instance, the war in Afghanistan, were it not for the Wiki Leaks, the public was constantly alive to the claims that the Taliban was on the verge of losing and that the outlawed group, Al Qaeda was severely weakened, and then the citizens are told that the US would stick to the deal till 2015, something that is in itself a contradiction.
It is such organizations as Wiki Leaks that force the mainstream media in acknowledging the deceits and the doublespeak of governments as well as highlighting the inconsistencies in the stories published by the Washington.
Moreover, some of Assanges distracters maintain their stance that he is no hero as some of the documents regarded as classified were of great importance to some of the people adversely mentioned in the classified documents and therefore acted as a source of insecurity to the people involved. A case in point is the information contained in the documents that would end up putting the lives of the American diplomats at great risks together with their sources.
While the distracters have their notion twisted to hide the perceived facts, the supporters of Assange argue that he acted in the best interest of the American citizens and that he only revealed that which was not meant to reach the public ear. It is a bit disturbing to come to the realization that a country of the United States stature would try to hide serious foreign issues and policies yet it had long suffered the long wait to see herself pride in transparency and the rule of law.
When viewed from an analytical perspective, Assange points out to the fact that most of the diplomats are prescient and knowledgeable. This denounces the notion that Assange is a controversial whistleblower without the interest of the nation at heart. While the expose was good in terms of feeding the public with important information they were kept away from, it is also important to critic Assange and his method. Firstly, the leaked cables caused jitters among foreign diplomats as some of their deeds had been exposed together with their respective conspiracy theories. A suitable example to such establishment is the Arab streets where the masses have come to the realization that their leaders have brainwashed them for a long time and that it was time to resist such establishments. However, it is useful to take note of the fact that the charge of reckless publishing is something that should not be wished away as the published documents will eventually compromising the safety of those adversely mentioned in the leaked documents. Firstly, it is worth noting that the newspapers and WikiLeaks make a very active effort in a bid to redact the sensitive information like the names when it is established that the information contained therein could endanger the lives of the individuals in the case. The second bit is that when the information from the leaked documents is shared with the diplomats themselves, then those who have demonstrated their honesty node their heads in agreement, not with Assange but on the issues that touch on their colleagues (Scott, 155). This is an indication that what Julian actually leaks is the true reflection what happens in most governmental organizations but would rather be kept secret.
It is also of great importance to give credit to Mr. Assange given his approach as well as method when it comes to operations, and this forms the basis for his fundamental gratitude after he ended up exposing the tremendous ills and shortsightedness of the first world and the governmental procedures in handling issues of great international interests. For example, how the United States handled the storage of large amounts of crucial documents on the databases that lacked serious security features and thus could be accessed with ease by intruders who could then endanger the lives of those involved and the names contained therein.
In his pursuit to make a statement, Assange could be viewed as trying to promote the interagency corporation through the creation of some unified structure where one would easily access based on the all-too-open access feature, something that is a strategic oversight that had unimaginable proportions. While doing this, the greatest problem of Assange was not in the information substance or weight of the exposed data package, but in the fact that the report on the United States data management system is very complex and too integrated, giving room for the 23-year-old to safely download the crucial documents from the system. in other words, he pokes holes in the integrity of the system and questions how a young soldier would gain access to the information from the confidential documents. With these revelations, it is only fair for the United States government to celebrate this iconic figure given his timely discovery dubbed exposure (Scott, 157). By exposing the data management system of the United States government, Assange is a helping hand since he is an American who should be considered a safe hand. The thought that such crucial information would fall into the hands of a Russian or a Chinese, then the story would entirely be a different one. For these reasons, amidst few misdeeds, Julian Assange is a hero, not only to the United States but also to the allies of the Free world.
Works Cited
Eldridge II, Scott. "HERO OR ANTI-HERO? Narratives of newswork and journalistic identity construction in complex digital megastories." Digital Journalism 5.2 (2017): 141-158.
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