The Wall Street Journal (9/7/20) reported that WikiLeaks published “a huge trove of classified material that painted a bleak picture of the American campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
US corporate media have buried coverage of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s extradition hearing in the UK, despite its being the media “Trial of the Century” (FAIR.org, 9/25/20). But even in the scarce coverage that does exist of this unprecedented case with immense implications for freedom of expression, one would hardly get the impression that the US and British governments are involved in an illegal conspiracy—in violation of their own laws—to punish Assange for the “crime” of journalism.
Coverage before and at the start of the trial by establishment media outlets like the New York Times (9/7/20), Wall Street Journal (9/7/20), USA Today (9/6/20) and the Associated Press (9/6/20) largely omitted simple facts, like Assange displaying signs of abuse. Of these reports, only USA Today cited Nils Melzer, a UN special rapporteur on torture, who observed that when he visited him last year, Assange displayed symptoms of “psychological torture,” likely caused by extreme stress, chronic anxiety and isolation.
AP framed Assange’s visible and prolonged abuse at the Belmarsh maximum security prison in London and the Ecuadorian embassy—where he sought asylum for seven years—in a partisan way, presenting it as a charge of his “supporters” rather than the judgment of professionals:
Supporters say the ordeal has harmed Assange’s physical and mental health, leaving him with depression, dental problems and a serious shoulder ailment.
In fact, Melzer’s assessment is corroborated by other experts. The Lancet (2/17/20) published an open letter by 117 doctors and psychologists calling for the end to what they called the “torture and medical neglect of Julian Assange.” Dr. Sondra Crosby, one of the first doctors to independently examine Guantánamo captives, who possesses extensive experience treating torture victims around the world, later testified at Assange’s hearing that he met “all of criteria for major depression,” and is at “high risk of completing suicide if he were to be extradited” to the US (Shadowproof, 9/24/20).
Torture and arbitrary detention are human rights violations of international conventions that both the US and Britain have signed, which obligates them to conduct prompt and impartial investigations whenever there are reasonable grounds to believe someone has been and is being tortured. In Assange’s case, these violations have been downplayed or even celebrated by US and British media (FAIR.org, 4/18/19). AP (9/22/20) reported on psychiatric expert Michael Kopelman of King’s College London testifying to Assange’s “intense suicidal preoccupation” and “auditory hallucinations,” without once noting the obvious connection to psychological torture.
Another human right enshrined in international conventions and in US and British domestic law is the right to a fair trial, which is precisely what has been and is currently being denied to Assange, although one wouldn’t know this from corporate media coverage. Establishment media omitted, for example, that Assange was sent to these hearings by a judge who ruled on his case despite having several undisclosed conflicts of interest.
Declassified UK (2/21/20) revealed that “the senior judge overseeing the extradition proceedings of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange received financial benefits from two partner organizations of the British Foreign Office.”
Before the hearing, journalists Matt Kennard and Mark Curtis of Declassified UK published several damning reports revealing that Emma Arbuthnot—the chief magistrate who had previously overseen Assange’s extradition proceedings before informally stepping aside in December, 2019 for “perception of bias”—had failed to disclose several conflicts of interest before delivering two rulings that prevented Assange from taking up asylum in Ecuador. Kennard and Curtis (11/14/19) reported that Arbuthnot had been receiving gifts and hospitality from Bechtel, a US military and cybersecurity company that had been exposed by WikiLeaks.
She has also taken part in junkets, along with her husband, paid for by two partner organizations of the British Foreign Office, which has long taken an anti-Assange position (Declassified UK, 2/21/20). (Her husband, James Arbuthnot, is a former Conservative Defense minister who has also worked closely with the neoconservative Henry Jackson Society—Declassified UK, 9/4/20). One of the junkets involved a meeting between James Arbuthnot and Turkish Energy Minister Berat Albayrak—the son-in-law of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan—whose personal emails were published by WikiLeaks.
Arbuthnot’s son, Alexander Arbuthnot, is the vice president of Vitruvian Partners, a private equity firm heavily invested in Darktrace—a company founded by GCHQ and MI5 to stop data leaks, which is staffed by veterans of the NSA and CIA, intelligence agencies behind the US government’s persecution of Assange (Declassified UK, 11/15/19).
Although UK legal guidance requires British judges to declare any conflicts of interest before the courts, Arbuthnot has a history of stepping aside from adjudicating cases only after media investigations expose them. Because she refused to disclose her conflicts of interest and only informally stepped away from Assange’s case, her previous rulings in February 2018 and June 2019—which brought Assange to his extradition hearings in 2020—couldn’t be revisited by his defense. Although she is no longer personally hearing Assange’s extradition proceedings, she remains the chief magistrate, and is still responsible for supporting and guiding the junior judges in her jurisdiction, like Judge Vanessa Baraitser, who presided over Assange’s extradition hearings and is responsible for delivering her verdict on January 4, 2021.
The New York Times (9/16/20) found the technical difficulties one of the more interesting things about the Assange hearings.
But can any of this scandalous information make it through the filters of US media? Aside from trivial reporting that focused on technical “glitches” on the first day of the hearing (New York Times, 9/16/20; Washington Post, 9/7/20), the media blackout from establishment outlets like the Times, Post, Journal, USA Today and CNN has largely forced US audiences to rely on reprinted AP reports to get any idea of what was going on during the trial.
To AP’s credit, it has covered important topics that other US outlets have ignored, such as US whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg’s defense of Assange (9/16/20), and testimony confirming that the US prosecution was lying when it claimed Assange wouldn’t be held in solitary confinement if he were to be extradited (9/29/20). It also covered crucial testimony from whistleblowers at the Spanish security firm UC Global, revealing that for their “American friends,” the firm had covertly installed in the Ecuadorian embassy microphones, cameras and special stickers that disrupt white noise machines (9/30/20).
As British media watchdog Media Lens (10/7/20) pointed out in its critique of the British media blackout, the mere fact that Assange’s confidential conversations with his lawyers had been violated under the auspices of the CIA “should have been sufficient to throw out any court case against Assange.” Journalist Kevin Gosztola (Shadowproof, 10/3/20) later reported that in the UK, the FBI had enlisted the Ecuadorian government’s help in stealing legally privileged material from Assange’s lawyers, which made it more difficult for his lawyers to prepare a defense for his extradition hearing.
However, when it came to the substance of what was actually argued by both the defense and prosecution, and the case’s evolving implications for the future of journalism, even the AP joined in the atrocious US media blackout. Without indispensable coverage from outlets like Shadowproof, Consortium News and former UK ambassador Craig Murray’s blog updates, one wouldn’t know that the prosecution had shifted its arguments from the claim that Assange isn’t a journalist—making a specious distinction between his behavior and those of other media professionals—to asserting the US government’s “right” to prosecute, under the 1917 Espionage Act, all journalists around the world who publish classified US information. These new US government charges could criminalize even receiving classified information, which is standard practice in journalism.
The prosecution was forced to do this because their unsubstantiated arguments collapsed under their own lies, such as when they falsely charged Assange with aiding whistleblower Chelsea Manning in a “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion,” or that WikiLeaks disclosures resulted in material harm, in order to dodge claims that the trial is politically motivated (Shadowproof, 9/26/20; Independent, 10/5/20).
At other times, AP reports focused on relatively trivial matters compared to reports by other observers at the extradition hearings. For example, AP (9/8/20) published an article focusing on Judge Baraitser instructing Assange to stop interrupting witnesses. On that same day, Craig Murray (9/8/20) reported on Baraitser’s blatantly inappropriate practice of reciting pre-written judgments prepared before she heard any lawyers argue their case in front of her, and preventing the defense from having adequate time to prepare for superseding indictments and present their case in court. Eyewitnesses to the trial, like Australian journalist John Pilger (Arena, 10/2/20), described it less as due process and more as “due revenge.”
AP, and corporate US news outlets more generally, never followed up on Consortium News’ revelation (9/28/20) that the US government’s lawyers had been relying not on actual witnesses but on a 2011 book by two Guardian journalists, Luke Harding and David Leigh, who are known to be hostile to Assange. Neither of them have been called to give evidence under oath about the contents of their book, which would require them to be cross-examined by Assange’s lawyers. Yet when the defense called former Der Spiegel journalist John Goetz to give evidence under oath refuting the book’s claim that Assange had remarked that informants deserved to die—a comment supposedly made at a dinner Goetz attended—Baraitser sided with the prosecution to prevent Goetz from giving firsthand testimony about the allegation (Consortium News, 9/16/20).
From top to bottom, the trial itself is a farce, since no one should be prosecuted for working with a whistleblower to expose war crimes, yet there are few reports questioning its legitimacy (FAIR.org, 4/12/19). On the contrary, it appears that major US news organizations have buried all the ways that the US and UK governments have already stacked the deck against Assange, in order to give the illusion that he’s receiving a fair trial.
Last Tuesday’s results, if they hold, won’t mean jack shit to Assange and his legal team.
Joe Dough and the Dems will be every bit as vicious as the current regime’s crimogeny.
Especially if the Biden Administration wants to get back at Assange for Publishing the Private E-Mail’s of Hillary Clinton, John Podesta and the DNC 2 weeks before the 2016 Presidential Election. And there is nothing preventing the Biden Dept of Justice from prosecuting Assange over this E-Mail disclosure if they so choose !
Consider the fact that Obama’s DOJ looked at the case very carefully and decided that the implications to the first amendment rights of all journalists would be hurt and they would lose any eventual appeal in the SCOTUS.
This is before Hillary Clinton got screwed by a Wikileaks leak!
“nothing preventing the Biden Dept of Justice from prosecuting Assange over this E-Mail”….have you heard of the 1st amendment or freedom of the press?
And oh yes, major media in America, you profited from Julian’s reports and yet you too have turned away from real reporting. The thuggish behavior of the evil UK judge is amazing—and I thought that England actually had real courts.
Apparently the judge and her husband and most of the media in the UK are useless members of an unjust society—who have no intention of justice, as they are totally committed to injustice and fear of being discovered for the corporate raiders that they are.
The UK has devolved into a joke —– along with destroying journalism and the truth.Worst of all, the Guardian and other papers, you profited by using Julian’s work and now you turn on him. Such sad cowards and even more sad is that so much of the world leadership has become just like that ridiculous and unfair judge—–I am amazed , UK, that so many of you have become as empty headed and mean as that person in America know as the Trump—-we will be rid of him soon enough—but England , you too have also lost both your way and your soul!
Thank you for the exposure.
Although I’m happy to see the plight of Julian Assange and the criminal ignoring of his imprisonment and trial by the world’s mass media publicized, I am puzzled by one thing: There is no mention of the World Socialist Website(WSWS.org).
The WSWS and its reporters – from the very beginning – have done the fine job of describing the failure of the ruling class media to cover Assange’s persecution and trial. I don’t think you can find a news source anywhere that has done anything like the WSWS has done – literally hundreds of stories. More importantly, they explain “why” while building support for his defense.
As former reporter for 18 years with Gannett I have always like FAIR. In this case you missed talking to the best source
I havent come across the WSWS’s reporting on the case, so I will have to apologize for not citing it. I do think Google suppression of left-wing sites played a role in that. In any case, I appreciate your thoughtful critique of my article.
The New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, CNN, Wall Street Journal, and the rest of the corporate media are the baton twirlers leading the parade as the United States marches to fascism.
Excellent metaphor!
Joshua,
Thank you for your prompt reply.
The World Socialist Web Site is one of the best sources for news on Julian Assange and Chelsey Manning who we have vigorously defended from the very beginning. I urge you to take a look at our website and look at just some of our coverage.
I think you are quite right to see Google as the problem in censoring our press.
As a retired reporter after working for a Gannett newspaper in Tennessee I am sympathetic to the plight of reporters.
Below just a small section of a statement recently approved by the Socialist Equality Party Congress (UK) concerning Julian Assange. There is also a link to a WSWS story on Twitter censorship of our youth group International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) US
Cordially,
Warren Duzak
“9. The grotesque show trial of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at London’s Old Bailey encapsulates the resort to authoritarianism in Britain. For exposing war crimes, Assange has over the last decade been subject to unlawful detention, psychological torture, assassination plots and the naked denial of due process as part of plans to extradite him to the US, where he faces life imprisonment and even the death penalty. The recent extradition hearing was a legal travesty that witnessed the junking of all democratic procedures by the judiciary, under instruction by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government. This has the full support of the Labour Party and an embedded media, who care nothing for the chilling impact on press freedom of the prosecution of a journalist and publisher under the Espionage Act.”
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/13/twit-n13.html
“Stop online censorship: Restore the Twitter account of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (US)!”
Also, excellent reporting.
Thanks to Joshua Cho for this review of the lamentable state of U.S. media coverage of Julian Assange, to the extent such coverage even exists.
I’m not sure if it was intended as such, but I take the final paragraph of the piece as oblique criticism of FAIR itself for having done far less than it could have in keeping the spotlight on Assange and the official campaign of destruction he has withstood.
I’m afraid this is in line with FAIR’s having shied away somewhat from bucking the mainstream, “liberal/progressive” establishment consensus in other instances as well, even as that consensus – in the era of anti-Trump “resistance” – has moved ever farther from truth, and closer to the permanent Beltway agenda of endless war and suppression of dissent. I’m thinking here firstly of the sprawling lie of Russia-gate and its associated frauds: a reader relying on FAIR would not understand the extent to which those false, CIA-spawned narratives have prevailed in corporate media for the past four years.
It may not have not been a total blackout (e.g. Alan MacLeod’s piece on the “Russian bounties” nonsense, 3 July 2020), but unfortunately FAIR has largely fallen short in the discomfiting task of criticizing the media’s manufacture of a Trump-Kremlin axis of evil, and its Pentagon/Langley-friendly vilification of Russia and Russians in general.
That’s been the biggest story on FAIR’s beat for some time now (the persecution of Assange is associated with it), and FAIR has largely kept it at arm’s length.
Excellent work such as Joshua Cho’s keeps me coming back to the site, but I’m hoping for more consistent exposure of these issues. Perhaps with more of the propaganda shifting to anti-China narratives, and a Democratic president likely to be targeted, that will happen.
I am not saying this just because I freelance for FAIR, but I don’t appreciate your critique of the organization. I don’t know the reasons why FAIR hasn’t covered Assange more frequently in 2020 since I’m not there, but they are a very small nonprofit working in the midst of the pandemic and have a lot to deal with. In fact, the amount of disinformation is so overwhelming that it’s impossible to keep up with every bit of it with the few people they have. I am literally unable to write as many media critiques of things I think should be pointed out simply because there are too many. However, I can definitely testify that the reason they haven’t been been pushing back on Russiagate coverage as frequently as you think they should is that isn’t because of some fear of bucking the mainstream establishment consensus.
Leaving that aside, I simply don’t agree with your assessment of how badly FAIR handled Russiagate coverage. I don’t think you would make such confident condemnations of their competence and courage if you have actually spent time in their office observing how they operate.
*it isn’t because of some fear of bucking the mainstream establishment consensus. Typo.
Maybe it would be useful to compare FAIR to what medialens has done in regard to the case. They’re a small group, and are closer to the events as well. Have the medialens editors done a better job? Also, this case has been playing out for some time, going back to the sexual allegations, and to the shifting justifications of the prosecution at present.
Joshua, just reread this Jonathan Cook piece, from September I believe: https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2020-09-02/media-assange-persecution/ . I try to read him, medialens, and FAIR regularly.
Great article. I feel sorry for Assange and I believe the Democrats wanted him removed so that he wouldnt continue to expose their lies, deceits and election frauds. There is way more to what Assange knows and this is why they want to destroy his mind and get him to kill himself. Dig deeper, there is more.
Wow! Great hard core writing!
Best I have read on the topic in awhile.
The fake mega media falls flat again.
Joshua Cho
Great work on this most important issue Joshua. Thanks for being on it.
Let him out! This is a farce!
Thanks Joshua. I’m glad we at Consortium News and some very good independent journalists made it into the Assange video link and courtroom, but how irregular too the expulsion of the NGO observers. For us it took some effort and significant expense to get over the Central Criminal Court’s hurdle of IFJ journalists only being eligible, a condition that had not been imposed on the Australian media since 2003 in relation to Iraq War reporting, according to a senior member of the Australian Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA). These cards had not even been necessary for reporting inside China, said an Australian Broadcasting Commission journalist. But Australia ended up being fairly well represented thanks to the rapid processing of IFJ cards by the MEAA journalists’ union, of which Julian Assange is a member. Besides the Australian bureau of Consortium News, veterans such as Mary Kostakidis and two national networks were present. As a consequence, mainstream reporting on the case in Assange’s country of citizenship has greatly improved. It also bodes well that Australia decided not to prosecute the ABC journalist Daniel Oakes who reported on war crimes in Afghanistan, and that these crimes will now be investigated.
Cathy Vogan mentions issuing of IFJ cards. What are these? When acronyms are used without expansion like you provided for MEAA, readers like me, who try to understand who is who, and what is the narrative as it unfolds, we cannot keep up. And you are not the only one who does it, it is often assumed by a writer/ reporter that some acronyms are common knowledge but these are not, and it makes it harder to follow a thread throughout a story. My mind tends to bog and give up in the fog. As I really care and want to understand, yet writers lose readers such as me when we lose track, as we switch off. And if this happens to capable readers, as I am, what hope is there for the every day man in the street ? Such as an acquaintance who at the time of the media reports of poo smeared on the toilet walls in the Ec Embassy , she believed it and she is not working class, and called him “he should not be a naughty boy “. What hope have we of mobilising public interest in the serious ramifications of this case if this is how Assange is perceived, since media at the time just stated it in a way that such behaviour along with the cat not cleaned up after, and skateboarding inside the room, were written as true and no suggestion of the obvious slur against his character for political reasons. Thus at that point my acquaintance understands that Assange has thus brought this all move to the prison upon himself. I’m sorry amongst the seriousness of this case to hark back to media reports of poo smears on walls, without explanation of the obvious ludicrousness and ‘timing’ of such aspersions with change of govt in Ecuador, poo, or shite sticks, thus a loss of sympathy, I’m sorry to say, plagues the public. Also amongst activists, I think compassion fatigue and helplessness in the face of such a brick wall of corruption across the board, as Joshua links the shoulder to shoulder, wall of resistance to Assange, brick by brick, from every department in high places and hip pocket interests and junkets, it’s a web of never ending collusion, it’s hard not to give up. And for the thousandth time, why has the Australian Government not spoken up? We know the lap dog role it plays to US endless war and if Democrats form US govt soon, with the reminder of their hatred of Assange, Australia will be less likely to speak out. Maybe Trump who would not even understand this story, and who has not started any wars in four years although threatened to bomb Iranian sacred’sites as a start to a war. Maybe if someone could get to him to convince him that releasing Assange would be a slap in the face to the Democrats, and could be his parting gesture to annoy them, would he do it? He is surrounded by a wall of right wing yes men. Who can penetrate that wall, to even put it in front of him? He is famous for doing unorthodox things.
The casual could be that widget matched with.
Hey! There are the FAIR Nazis! I was worried you hadn’t written a piece supporting white supremacist and obvious US intel asset Julian Assange for a few days and was worried Jim had choked to death on a Ford Foundation grant or something.
Fun fact: Did you know most of Wikileaks’s board of directors are anti-Chinese dissidents who, like the US oligarchy, seek to destabilize / overthrow the Communist Party of China. Why did Wikileaks want Trump to win again? I forget – because my mind is too clouded by all the Nazis FAIR pays to promote fascist genocide day after day after day…