If some news of Kristinn Hrafnsson one day taking over from Julian Assange are to be believed I think WikiLeaks has found a perfect successor. Kristinn's calmness under pressure, precision and ability to be unphased by gratuitous attacks shone through the other night, 1st April, at the Wikileaks: Two sides of the story conference at the SKUP (Norwegian Centre for Investigative Journalism) during his debate with old collaborators and now enemies David Leigh and Mark Davies from The Guardian.
All was fine until Kristinn started discussing their media partners and mentioned what's known to everyone in the know: The Guardian are not longer one of them. At this David Leigh started his - annoying and tiresome - 'Victim of the Ogre Assange' persona. He tried to sway the subject at hand by picking up the 'Is Assange an antisemite?' debate that exploded weeks ago in relation to WikiLeaks's collaboration with an openly antisemite journalist, Israel Shamir.
Yes, Hrafnsson didn't fully answer the accusations but after all how could he when David Leigh kept on spouting his bile and basically being noisy just in the conviction that shouting ('It's disgraceful!' and 'I'm disappointed in you, Kristinn' seemed his accusations of choice the other night. The former not sounding heart-felt for the right reasons and the latter sounding teacher-like, as if telling Hrafnsson off for not doing his homework) his ideas could drive home his indignation better? No, it doesn't. Someone at The Guardian please tell him.
Kristinn got back at him by pointing out the hypocrisy of Leigh's accusations especially in the light of the not so nice comments Assange - and even Christine Assange - was subjected to. But throughout the whole exchange Kristinn showed politeness, firmness and especially sense of humour. The only 'hilarity', unintentional, from Leigh came when he had to consult Davies on whether they see WikiLeaks as publishers, 'Do we see them as publishers? Yes, we do'. Talk about a rabbit caught in the headlights. From there all went pear-shaped. Thankfully Davies refrained from stooping as low as Leigh and kept himself out of the 'debate'. He probably reads all Twitter comments from WikiLeaks supporters and knows how they can rip them to bits. Leigh doesn't seem to remember them. Poor old Leighy.
The next controversy might come from the International Journalism Festival in Italy which Mark Stephens and Daniel Domscheit-Berg might both attend in few weeks' time. Let's be ready for some more mudslinging from Domscheit-Berg - after all he has a book to flog - and a repartie by Mark Stephens. We haven't seen Mark angry since when he invited Marianne Ny to attend Assange's extradition hearings. And although we enjoyed his red-cheeked anger and indignation, we do care for his coronaries.
Going back to the SKUP conference, WikiLeaks with their WikiWaka dance school idea showed much more the ability to take things on their stride and have a clearer picture of what they're trying to do. And much more sense of humour. Something that Leigh might want to explore once in his life. You know, after all you live just once and you can choose either to try and do something useful with your time here or be vindictive while flogging some rushed book job. Just a thought...
