Wikileaks, or "Lets Make the Government Love or Hate us 101"

Wikileaks, this is a term we hear about. Whether the government loves or hates them depending on what political opponent they outed, or agency revealed, it is a mess. A hugely, respectable, dangerous mess.

I'll say this about it. When it comes to instructional learning, it should be treated the same way as wikipedia. You don't use it for sources, you use it as an investigation starter (in research we sometimes use the citations from the site to actually lead us to books or journals to read, wikipedia I mean).

Yes, the documents are nice and in my opinion Assange is one smart, narcissistic son of a gun for pulling what he has done with his website, but I can't say to fully trusting or not trusting the site. Wikileaks is the same instructional learning, instead it is posters submitting "leaks" for all to believe in. Yes it has the word "Wiki" in it, but that doesn't mean it is related to the biased consensus pushing like Wikipedia is. It isn't fully checked, just leaked to the public. And Assange (or at least his site) has released personal information on many people before.

If one was to handle Wikileaks, you need to uncover more and question what you can through the sources you reach rather than come to a startling conclusion. Which is why I have nothing but contempt for those in public administration who flip flop on Wikileaks all the time. Case in point, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who recently expressed his hostile beliefs towards the site stating that :

“WikiLeaks will take down America any way they can,” he said. “I don’t love WikiLeaks.” (Benen, 2017)

But Wait, this was when Wikileaks was attacking the US government that he was hired to help run. He supported it completely and used it as "Evidence" against Hillary for her emails (Benen, 2017). Wikileaks could be ran by hostile state actors, or it might not, I don't care as just like any true scholar or academic, you take a Wiki with a grain of salt and use it as a jumping point to find the research you are looking for. Government, especially in instructional learning, needs to work the same way...Hopefully...One day...Yeah it probably won't. 

Works Cited: 

Benen, S. (2017, July 21). CIA Director Pompeo's Views on Wikileaks Have Apparently Evolved. Retrieved from MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/cia-director-pompeos-views-wikileaks-have-apparently-evolved