Wikileaks at City: last footnotes

The twitterstream arguing about Julian Assange’s appearance at City University is still active I see. So here are two footnote links, one from an Assange supporter GeorgieBC on the “new journalism“. That very phrase has of course been around a bit before now. I’m still not in sympathy in the least with the hacker outlook, but this is a calmer insight into a quite, entirely different philiosophy from journalism.

Second and last a post from Padraig Reidy of Index On Censorship on the the dilemmas which arranging Assange’s debate posed for an organisation devoted to open access. Even leakers want some media control.

Update 6/10/10: good post by Paul Prentice, one of the City University students who listened to Assange.

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  1. What I find fascinating about the post-talk debate is the tone taken about David Aaronovitch. He is described as ‘right-leaning’, and ‘a known war hawk who seems to believe he has manifest destiny to be a part of the invasion of any country he chooses’. Even someone who ended up agreeing with him did so with a clothes peg on his nose – ‘I didn’t expect ever to say that’. No one explains exactly why. It is an unpleasant example of a tendency towards ad hominem attacks in public discourse – eg ‘you’re only saying that because you are […]’ – rather than engaging with the substantive argument of an opponent.