Cherry-picked emails

Recently, Samherji has examined the data that Wikileaks has published about the company, which is mainly a large volume of emails from Jóhannes Stefánsson's mailbox. This is the data the media has used in its coverage of the activities of companies affiliated with Samherji in Namibia.

Jóhannes had at least 44,028 emails in his mailbox between 2014 and 2016. He handed over 18,497 emails from that period to Wikileaks, which means he only gave Wikileaks 42% of the emails. Most of the emails that Jóhannes decided not to hand over are from 2015. He does not appear to have sent Wikileaks any emails from that year if some mail from January is excluded. This can be clearly seen on the following graph.

This method, to cherry-pick emails, must raise more questions than it answers. What is the content of the unpublished emails? Why were the periods in question chosen but not the whole period? Is there a discrepancy in the data that was not released and the data covered so far by the media?

The fact that 58% of the emails were never published must be food for thought for those who believe that Jóhannes Stefánsson's account of events is correct and consistent with the truth. The members of the media that have covered this story also have to consider if they have only seen data that supports one account and not the overall picture.