Truth. Can you handle it? Doesn’t matter, because online provocateur Julian Assange believes so passionately in revealing certain secrets, his whistleblowing site WikiLeaks has prided itself on doing just that.

Since WikiLeaks published classified military documents in 2010, which compromised the US and other international governments, Assange has been the centre of furious debate about censorship, the exposure of institutional ‘wrongdoing’ – and where the truth lies.

Expectedly, the first major motion picture about Australian cyber celebrity Assange has become a battleground of contested honesty. Whether The Fifth Estate is fact or fiction remains blurry, as key players dispute its telling of Assange and his WikiLeaks watershed.

Released across Assange’s homeland this month, The Fifth Estate is based upon an unauthorised biography which Oscar-winning director Bill Condon latched on to. Condon maintains his dramatised version of recent history is true to its subject, including representing Assange as an ego-driven ‘tragic hero who sowed the seeds of his own demise’.

Throughout The Fifth Estate‘s production, though, Assange has publicly decried it. He lobbied star Benedict Cumberbath to not play him. WikiLeaks has published an extensive reply to The Fifth Estate, describing it as ‘fictional’, ‘one-sided’ and driven by the agendas of former WikiLeaks employee Daniel Domscheit-Berg and British journalist Nick Davies (both have ‘personal and legal disputes’ with WikiLeaks).

Such fighting about truth befits muckraking Assange who, since last year, has been living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Ecuador granted Assange political asylum, after he was wanted in Sweden on sexual-assault claims. Assange denies the assault allegations. He believes if he returns to Sweden to face the claims, the United States government will seek to extradite him on espionage or conspiracy charges.

Assange and his supporters state he is the victim of a governmental witch-hunt, because he crusades for free speech and independence – amid media empires which are accused of bias, spin or cover-up. Yet detractors would argue Assange and WikiLeaks recklessly undermine international security and endanger lives, as they spearhead a revolution in online activism.

What’s the truth here? Do you believe it has been exposed? Do you care? Have you given up on finding truth – in anything – because it has become such a malleable commodity?

One of the casualty’s of our post-post-modern society is truth was declared ‘open to individual interpretation’. Sounded good until, in practice, that collapses under weight of contradiction. How can one person’s truth also be another’s lie? Isn’t truth truth?

Assange seems to live by the adage ‘the truth will set you free’. Ironically, though, he is imprisoned. But liberation shouldn’t be expected in matters of truth, unless it’s by the specific truth that adage is referring to.

Many will not realise Jesus spoke those famous words (John 8: 31-32). Being freed by truth comes from knowing it, Jesus said. Knowing it comes from holding to Jesus’ teachings, and living your life in devotion to him. That’s the truth which sets people free.

Have Assange or WikiLeaks inspired you to seek the truth? Believe it can be found, and true freedom bestowed, when truth is sought from ‘The Truth’ (John 14:6).