{"id":28010,"date":"2017-11-15T08:09:27","date_gmt":"2017-11-15T13:09:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=28010"},"modified":"2017-11-15T08:09:27","modified_gmt":"2017-11-15T13:09:27","slug":"the-atlantic-commits-malpractice-selectively-edits-to-smear-wikileaks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=28010","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Atlantic\u2019 Commits Malpractice, Selectively Edits To Smear WikiLeaks"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u2018The Atlantic\u2019 Commits Malpractice, Selectively Edits To Smear WikiLeaks<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Everyone was buzzing about the shocking, bombshell new report<\/a> by The Atlantic <\/em>yesterday, which revealed that Donald Trump Jr. and the WikiLeaks Twitter account had engaged in a \u201clargely one-sided\u201d conversation in private messages over the course of several months.<\/p>\n

Don Jr. actually comes off looking fairly normal in the report, while WikiLeaks comes off looking weird and sleazy in a way that will likely damage its reputation even further than the mainstream media campaign to smear the outlet already has. WikiLeaks is seen asking for favors Trump never fulfilled, making recommendations Trump Jr. didn\u2019t act upon, and asking for leaks Trump Jr. never gave them, which when you step back and think about it are actually fairly normal things for a leak outlet to do, all things considered. But the following passage from the Atlantic<\/em> report<\/a> makes the whole thing look far darker:<\/p>\n

It is the third reason, though, Wikileaks wrote, that \u201cis the real kicker.\u201d \u201cIf we publish them it will dramatically improve the perception of our impartiality,\u201d Wikileaks explained. \u201cThat means that the vast amount of stuff that we are publishing on Clinton will have much higher impact, because it won\u2019t be perceived as coming from a \u2018pro-Trump\u2019 \u2018pro-Russia\u2019 source.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

See that full stop at the end of the last sentence there? That\u2019s journalistic malpractice. We learned this when Donald Trump Jr. published the entirety of his private messages with WikiLeaks in response to the Atlantic<\/em> article:<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/span>Julia Ioffe<\/span> <\/a><\/p>\n
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\u2714<\/b><\/span>@juliaioffe<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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SCOOP: Turns out Donald Trump, Jr. corresponded with Wikileaks during the 2016 presidential campaign. My latest. https:\/\/www.<\/span>theatlantic.com\/politics\/archive\/2017\/11\/the-secret-correspondence-between-donald-trump-jr-and-wikileaks\/545738\/\u00a0<\/span>\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n