It has to be positive or we will not allow it <\/p>\n
The so-called open government, whistleblowing site Wikileaks, is doing its level best to censor a documentary on the outfit because it fails to praise the outfit to the skies and put a positive spin on its leaderJulian Assange. <\/p>\n
The documentary is called Risk and the makers are complaining that the outfit is so obsessed with its image it is prepared to wield legal threats and lawyers in a way that is almost absurdly hypocritical. <\/p>\n
The documentary makers, Brenda Coughlin, Yoni Golijov And Laura Poitras have told Newsweek that they were making a positive documentary film about Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and it unequivocally defend WikiLeaks journalistic right to publish true and newsworthy information. <\/p>\n
However they were surprised when Julian Assange and WikiLeaks sent cease and desist letters to its distributors demanding they stop the release of Risk. <\/p>\n
The filmmakers go into what lengths they went to work directly with Wikileaks and Assange on the film starting back in 2011. Assange himself gave consent to the film and even signed a licensing agreement to use Wikileaks footage for it. <\/p>\n
Some people involved with Wikileaks requested not to be in the film, and the filmmakers complied. People from the site and their lawyers have been shown screenings of the film before every regional release, including as recently as April of this year. There is no claim made thus far that any of the content of the film is false. <\/p>\n
But things turned sour in 2016. Assange and his lawyers insisted that the documentary remove scenes from the film where he speaks about the two women who made sexual assault allegations against him in 2010. <\/p>\n
WikiLeaks comments have consistently been about image management, including: demands to remove scenes from the film where Assange discusses sexual assault allegations against him; requests to remove images of alcohol bottles in the embassy because Ecuador is a Catholic country and it looks bad; requests to include mentions of WikiLeaks in the 2016 U.S. presidential debates; and, requests to add more scenes with attorney Amal Clooney because she makes WikiLeaks look good, the documentary makers said. <\/p>\n
The film makers statement says that all this seems to support the claims that Assange is an egomaniac. <\/p>\n
But that charge aside, what should be abundantly clear is that the ideals of the site appear to have fallen by the wayside when it comes to a simple documentary that has refused to cinematically stroke Wikileaks to the degree it wishes. That's not a good look for a site that survives on people's belief that it is committed to open and honest information, the statement said. <\/p>\n
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