Julian Assange has said a lot of times that he doesn't like to edit the leaks in general because it is a slippery slope. Many times they do it to prevent dishonest attacks from people regarding some information, stealing impact from the more relevant worthwhile information of the leaks. I agree that the edited version of the collateral murder video was unfortunate but it hardly changed the substance of the video: collateral murder. The changes were minimal, specially if you take into account the impact that the video had. You're giving too much weight to the editorialization of that video, which amounts to nearly nothing in context of subsequent (and previous) leaks from wikileaks. To top it all off, there is not other news organization at the same level of wikileaks in this stuff (I wish there were tho) so for now we're stuck with them, and they are more than good at what they do.
>You're giving too much weight to the editorialization of that video, which amounts to nearly nothing in context of subsequent (and previous) leaks from wikileaks.
I completely disagree with this.
Collateral Murder frames the entire incident as the intentional, deliberate killing of civilians and a journalist. It's filled with commentary telling you exactly how to interpret what you're seeing. You're told that this guy on the video is clearly carrying around a camera. You're told that, sure, some of these guys were carrying around rifles, but they were just calmly hanging around. You're shown a quote from the military saying that they did not deliberately civilians, then shown images of a van with big arrows pointing at it labeled "CHILDREN." The entire thing is presented with the clear implication that these were deliberate killings of innocent people.
The actual context of that video? A mechanized infantry unit in the area was taking fire from unknown sources and the Apache was there to provide air cover. The Apache gunner is sitting in a helicopter being buffeted in the air while peering through a 5"x5" monochrome display -- something roughly the size of two iPhones sitting side by side -- and sees a large group of men obviously armed with rifles nearby. He sees a large cylindrical object and calls RPG because large groups of armed men in a war zone with active shooting going on are more likely to be carrying around an RPG than a Nikon. He opens fire on them.
The result is the same: a bunch of people died absolutely needlessly and tragically. It never should have happened.
But in one context, you're telling people that the military is going around deliberately killing innocent people for no reason. In the other context, people are dying despite the best intentions of the troops involved because war is a messy, confusing, and terrible thing.
Presenting it in one context is just going to turn off anyone who -- rightly -- thinks you're just trying to sell an agenda. The other just might get people realizing that war is something to be avoided because there's no such thing as a clean war.
