medium | The author of the Atlantic
article, Julia Ioffe, put a period rather than a comma at the end of
the text about not wanting to appear pro-Trump or pro-Russia, and
completely omitted WikiLeaks’ statement following the comma that it
considers those allegations slanderous. This completely changes the way
the interaction is perceived.
This
is malpractice. Putting an ellipsis (…) and then omitting the rest of
the sentence would have been sleazy and disingenuous enough, because
you’re leaving out crucial information but at least communicating to the
reader that there is more to the sentence you’ve left out, but
replacing the comma with a period obviously communicates to the reader
that there is no more to the sentence. If you exclude important
information while communicating that you have not, you are blatantly
lying to your readers.
There is a
big difference between “because it won’t be perceived as coming from a
‘pro-Trump’ ‘pro-Russia’ source” and “because it won’t be perceived as
coming from a ‘pro-Trump’ ‘pro-Russia’ source, which the Clinton campaign is constantly slandering us with.”
Those are not the same sentence. At all. Different meanings, different
implications. One makes WikiLeaks look like it’s trying to hide a
pro-Trump, pro-Russian agenda from the public, and the other conveys the
exact opposite impression as WikiLeaks actively works to obtain Donald
Trump’s tax returns. This is a big deal.
And
it made a difference in the way WikiLeaks was perceived, as evidenced
by the things people who read the article are saying about Ioffe’s
version:
