There might have been other reasons for him to forgo partnerships with newspapers: Namely, that coordinating with them could have dampened WikiLeaks’ often sensational promotion of the contents. And despite Assange’s repeated assurances that there were juicy scandals coming — and WikiLeaks using the hashtag #octobersurprise to promise giant, career-ending revelations — there wasn’t actually all that much to find in emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign. “Newspapers and television networks have put hundreds of reporters to work combing through her campaign’s emails, searching desperately for bombshells,” wrote the L.A. Times. And there were a few — the revelation that Donna Brazile seems to have leaked town hall and debate questions to Clinton was particularly damning, and cost Brazile her job at CNN. Still, the major October Surprise never surfaced.
The damage, however, was extraordinary. WikiLeaks’ slow-release approach forced journalists to cover each batch as new “revelations,” even when there wasn’t much to actually cover. Having learned through bitter experience that few Americans would bother to actually read them, WikiLeaks sprinkled emails into the news cycle and gave Americans the impression of a campaign wound so deep it couldn’t heal. While Donald Trump rapid-cycled through scandals that seemed not to stick because they were so quickly displaced by fresh ones, “the emails” lingered in the public eye.
The effect was devastating. To quote a marketing book, “Damage is proportional to duration. Most companies can survive one day of bad news. It’s when the story drags on and the crisis continues that your reputation suffers.” By artificially prolonging the story, WikiLeaks conveyed the impression of wrongdoing so deep it transcended the amnesia we’ve come to expect from the news cycle; of a grievous wound that wouldn’t heal and which — if we ever bothered to actually take a look at it — we’d find shocking indeed.
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