WikiLeaks Founder Will Not Be Leaking Info About His Personal Life

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange walked out of an interview with CNN in London.
Assange, who was being interviewed to discuss the 400,000 pages of documents WikiLeaks released about the Iraq War, grew upset when interviewer Atika Shubert asked about his personal legal issues. Assange was investigated in Sweden on charges of sexual abuse that were then dropped, but the investigation was re-opened shortly thereafter.
"This interview is about something else," Assange told Shubert. "I'm going to walk if you're going to contaminate us revealing the deaths of 104,000 people with attacks against my person."
Assange repeatedly threatened to walk off, calling Shubert's questions about his personal life "completely disgusting."
As Shubert persisted, Assange apologized, removed his mic and walked off the set. -Huffington Post

In my opinion, Julian Assange did the right thing in this situation. He was being personally attacked during an interview that was supposed to be centered on much more important issues. Those issues, including our nation’s safety and the preservation of The Constitution’s “right to free speech”, are important to America and all its citizens. Assange’s personal life is not what this interview was supposed to be about or what it should be about. This story leads back to the issue of soft news vs. hard news. This reporter was trying to turn this interview into an episode of Entertainment Tonight and in doing so was avoiding the real issues at hand. Her “tough” questions ought to be about the reasoning and logic behind the releasing of potentially life-threatening and dangerous documents to the world, not questions about his inner-office relationships and character flaws. Please save that stuff for The View and stick to your guns CNN.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/23/julian-assange-walks-out-_n_772837.html