Julian Assange: Unfiltered

An unlovable Australian by the name of Julian Assange did what governments try to prevent on a daily basis: he leaked information that sparked immense controversy and trouble for the U.S. and other nations. American military field reports from Iraq and Afghanistan were leaked in July 2010, and over 250,000 diplomatic cables were presented by the Wikileaks website in December of 2010. These leaks wreaked a great deal of havoc, hurting U.S. diplomatic relations, uncovering questionable actions by political figures, revealing the identities of U.S. informants and secret operatives, etc.

Now where does Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky's propaganda model fall into all of this? Cowering at the feet of Assange, apparently.

Assange was able to bypass every one of the five filters that are meant to limit the information released by the media, sticking a big middle finger in the face of the propaganda model.

1) As an activist and head of a non-profit website, he was not held back by the profit-driven mass media.
2) For the same reason, he cared very little or probably not at all about losing advertisers that may disagree with his actions.
3) Because his information came from direct leaks from the government, he did not have to rely on the government and other entities mentioned in the leaks in order to put them up on his website.
4) Perhaps he was only thinking in the short-term or does not care about the repercussions of his actions: either way, flak did not stop him from leaking the information. (After seeing his calm, "I don't care" demeanor from footage taken in the wake of the wikileaks and rape allegations in Sweden, I don't think flak is a big concern of his.)
5) Terrorism, or anticommunism for that matter, did not play much of a role in the wikileaks.

Obviously the leaked information would have never made it to the public mass media had it gone through the filters of the propaganda model. This both frustrated those wanting to keep these things a secret and delighted the mass media, because they were able to cover things that would have been taboo otherwise. So many stories and headlines resulted from information leaked by Assange's website, and the public eye was shown a side of politics and war never before seen.

At the end of all this I have one question lurking in my mind: What would Herman and Chomsky have to say about the internet as a part of their propaganda model?

(Side note: One thing proven by the wikileaks is that governments withhold and manipulate information given to the media not just to propel their political agendas but to protect people who should remain secrets, such as informants and allied military forces. These people, such as Afghan informants, are seen as traitors to their native people when their names are leaked and must either seek U.S. sanction or fall victim to those who feel betrayed.)