Speaking at a special Frontline Club event on Saturday alongside renowned philosopher Slavoj Žižek and investigative journalist Amy Goodman, Assange claimed a Cablegate was needed not only for US and Russian intelligence services but for the American daily which first published in 1851.

"It would reveal the extent to which stories have been suppressed and how they have been managed,” said Assange, who told the audience that Daniel Ellsberg claimed the New York Times had been in possession of 1000 Pentagon Papers before he passed them onto the Washington Post and 17 other newspapers in1971. 

Only when it realised its rivals had the papers did the New York Times begin publishing the documents on 13 June of that year, Assange claimed.

Since he was propelled “inside the centre of the storm”  by the publication of the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs and the Embassy Cables last year, Assange said he had learnt the extent to which history “is shaped and distorted by the media.”

Contrasting Fox News’ decision, on account of its "hunger" for ratings, to show more of the July 2010 Collateral Murder video than its rival CNN had "under the pretext of sensitivity", Assange said:

"The truth that we got out of Fox was greater than we did out of CNN and similarly for many institutions in the media that we think are liberal."

The 400,000 Iraq War Logs documents, which were published in October 2010, were "the most detailed, significant history of a war to be published," said Assange. Among them were details of some 15,000 hitherto unrecorded civilian deaths:

"Just think about that 15,000 people whose deaths were recorded by the US military but were completely unknown to the rest of the world, that’s a very significant thing."

Responding to claims that have been made that WikiLeaks has not told us anything we didn’t already know, the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek said WikiLeaks worked in the same way as "that beautiful old fairy tale" the Emperor’s Clothes. He added:

"WikiLeaks is not simply telling the truth. You are telling the truth in a very precise way of confronting explicit lines of justification, rationalisation of the public discourse."

Asked about his decision to collaborate with more than 80 media organisations, Assange said it was necessary in order to "maximise the impact" of the material.

"If you want to have an impact and you are an organisation that is very small then you have to coopt or leverage the mainstream press," he said, raising the question of what what impact a new "internet educated" generation working in News Corp and other big corportations might have.

Discussing the impact of WikiLeaks in the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt this year, Assange said it was "hard to disentangle". He described how a number of factors, including the rise of staellite TV, and Al Jazeera’s decision to film protests in the street, had meant the regime could no uphold its claim that opposition was merely "an outcast voice".

"What the media does is censor those voices and prevents people from understanding that actually what the state is saying is the minority is in the majority," said Assange.

"Once people realised their view was in the majority then they understand that they physically have numbers," said Assange, adding that it also became impossible for US to support the regime in Tunisia after Embassy Cables likened President Ben Ali’s family to a Mafia elite.

Žižek said it was significant that WikiLeaks publication of material meant that politicians could no longer operate on the basis of ‘I know that you know but we can still play the cynical game of pretending that we don’t know’.

He added: "The function of WikiLeaks more than to tell us something that we don’t know, is to push us to the point when you cannot pretend you don’t know."

Full coverage of the event can be found here. Video can be watched here and you can read our live blog of the event here.

INSI, unlike other organizations who work alongside the media, have the sense and the sensitivity to include all those who work for the media and alongside us. They draw no artificial distinction between reporter and producer, photographer or fixer, editor or driver. We are all in pursuit of the truth.

I’m sure most of us have seen the results of the recent Global Safety Inquiry sponsored by INSI and chaired by the BBC’s Richard Sambrook. Once again it confirmed what we all feared – the last decade has been a disgusting catalogue of death, injury and intimidation for our profession.
This brings me to my point. Why are so many organizations apparently still in denial when it comes to the obvious fact that the media profession, its professionals, freelances and those who work with us are in such terrible danger? And the situation is getting worse by the day.

Our jobs have always been dangerous and most of us regard that as the price of doing business. But the attrition rate in many parts of the globe is now beyond shocking and has been all-consuming for those news managers whose job it is to assign staff and freelances to war zones or dangerous locations.

Most mature and intelligent news organizations place safety ahead of any other consideration and set aside a large proportion of their annual operating budgets in an attempt to keep their people out of harm’s way. Cash is spent on safety training – for many of us this has become mandatory before anyone is deployed – and also much is spent on safety equipment, vehicles and security personnel. Very few of us in Iraq for example operate without a veritable army of security. We don’t like it but we have no choice. Actually, we do. Without the security we would have to pull out. We know enough about how dangerous it has become without constant security to know that it would be totally insane to operate without adequate protection. Those organizations and individuals who try are either irresponsible or just plain stupid. They are risking the lives of those who work for them.

The industry leaders when it comes to safety tend, of course, to be the BBC and the agencies like Reuters and AP and broadcasters like CNN and other US networks. And, as we know, even these measures do not keep them from suffering casualties. Many of our print colleagues, either for lack of funds or misplaced bravado, are less well equipped and continue to run a serious risk that their reporters and photographers face terrible consequences. It is a complete absurdity to think that a single foreign reporter or photographer can move around in Iraq without protection. Every member of the media is at real risk in Iraq at present including, as the ABC deaths prove, local staffers. The same is true in Afghanistan, Somalia, and other flashpoints around the world. We are all equally at risk.

Of course there are some siren voices out there that suggest that if we are so at risk then we cannot possibly do the jobs we need to do. That a fortress existence in Iraq or Afghanistan or armed guards in Somalia somehow negates our ability to provide fair and impartial coverage for our readers or viewers. But this is not the case. It has to be possible for big and small organizations alike, staffers and freelancers, to find affordable security to continue to do their jobs. Maybe we should consider some kind of cooperative so that those with fewer resources can afford adequate security and safety back-up.

Passionate journalists will always find a way to provide compelling reportage. But we gain nothing from a naïve belief that the world is like it used to be. I am afraid that the halcyon days of reporters and photographers setting off on assignment on a wing and a prayer are behind us. It is a dangerous world that we choose to cover these days and the profession needs to work harder than ever to ensure that we get there and back safely.