JULIAN ASSANGE GETS BAIL-AND AIRTIME

This week's perspective from Joe Chidley:
Like everyone else, we’ve been watching the Julian Assange / WikiLeaks saga with a mixture of anticipation and disappointment. For the most part, the much-vaunted leaks have been pretty pedestrian – diplomatic cables and the like that didn’t exactly rip the lid off any kind of international conspiracy. (Although Moammar Gadhafi and his Russian nurse – that was pretty great stuff.) Meanwhile, Assange’s cat-and-mouse game with Swedish authorities, who want to question him on allegations of sexual assault, has sputtered along, the latest development being his release on bail in England – and a spate of media interviews from his sanctuary (a mansion owned by supporter, journalist and famous ex-soldier Vaughan Smith). From Bungay, England, Assange has been vocal and visible in his own defence, claiming he’s the victim of a smear campaign and vowing to continue “his work” no matter what the authorities do. (He has promised to release sensitive information about banks next.) What, we wonder, is Assange up to, from a communications perspective? Isn’t he just digging himself deeper? Is his goal to further the cause of WikiLeaks? Or simply to get his mug on the covers of magazines and the front pages of newspapers? Either way, perhaps his “out there” approach is the right way to go. WikiLeaks relies for its content on would-be whistleblowers – so publicity matters. His messaging is on-brand: he makes frequent reference, for instance, to the “Orwellian situation” he has been put in – just the sort of thing WikiLeaks says it seeks to expose. And if the goal here is self-aggrandizement, then Assange has scored a full-on touchdown, garnering more coverage as a celebrity fugitive than was inspired by the actual leaks. True, he didn’t make it as Time magazine’s Person of the Year – Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg got the nod for 2010. But that looks a fumble for Time, which was put on the defensive over the decision, given that in an online readers’ poll Assange got the most votes by a very wide margin. We’re not sure what his game is, but for the moment it looks like Julian Assange is winning.