The long 60 Minutes segment on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange from last night (1/26/11) is definitely worth a look. But this set-up from correspondent Steve Kroft was certainly odd:
Julian Assange is not your average journalist or publisher, and some have argued that he is not really a journalist at all. He is an anti-establishment ideologue with conspiratorial views. He believes large government institutions use secrecy to suppress the truth and he distrusts the mainstream media for playing along.
Assange believes the government keeps important secrets? And that mainstream media play along? That is kooky.
I thought this exchange was also odd:
Assange: “The statements by the Vice President Biden saying, for instance that I was a high-tech terrorist. Sarah Palin calling to our organization to be dealt with like the Taliban, and be hunted down. There’s calls either for my assassination or the assassination of my staff or for us to be kidnapped and renditioned back to the United States to be executed.”
Kroft: “Well as you know, we have a First Amendment and people can say whatever they want, including politicians. I don’t think that many people in the United States took seriously the idea that you were a terrorist.”
When people talk about being threatened with death, one doesn’t usually respond by pointing to the First Amendment–because death threats are not protected by the First Amendment. And people don’t take what Biden and Palin say seriously? Why is every Facebook post by Palin treated as news, then?
the government lies and the official media types up the lies….?
i’d suggest that’s way past “theory” stage at this point
We all know CBS is MSM but that doesn’t make Krofts’ echoing the character assassinations of the MSM any less forgivable. Assange stood his ground admirably but my question is why should he have to defend himself OR freedom of the press before THE PRESS? The character assassination of Assange has got to stop. Assange’s natural innate dignity speaks well for him, thank GOD, because he sure doesn’t get any support from the MSM. Are you listening MSM? If the DOJ succeeds in prosecuting Assange it bodes ill for freedom of the press (and the Constitution) in this country which is probably now down below 24th in the world for freedom of the press, and YOU ARE NEXT. You should be standing up for Assange all guns blazing MSM, but no, you seem just a bunch of wussy cowards who won’t stand up for the first Amendment to the Constitution either.
I just wanted to repeat that last sentence in the quote… “he distrusts the mainstream media for playing along.”
Am I the only who noticed a guilty conscience in how that was phrased right there?
Here’s what Assange COULD have said about being a â┚¬Ã…“subversiveâ┚¬Ã‚Â:
http://www.spiritalchemy.com/blog/rethinking-subversion
I am an American citizen who believes, as do many Americans, that our government has evolved into a savagely corrupt, moraly devoid, greed motivated monster that has wonderd too far from what our founding fathers designed. I work at a truck stop and have the opportunity to speak with many people from all over the country. Many of them have voiced,”what happened to my
america? It’s gone. Or, ” this is not the America I grew up with. I have even heard from several that they think It’s about time for an American “revolution.” They are fed up with the “stupidity” of our law makers and constant regulations forced upon them. But the conversations usually end with a statement like, “something needs to be done to change how laws are passed without the people having the opportunity to vote on it. But everone is so bussy trying to earn a living that no one has the time to engage in a long time consuming effort to bring about change. So I say to Mr. Assange atta boy we the people need you and more like you. I see you as a world patriot !!!! Keep up the good fight and don’t let the basterds get away with anything. keep safe. You’re a HERO in my eyes and many many Americans agree with me.
The mainstream media, as shown on 60 Minutes, and elsewhere it incapeable and truth or integrity in its reports and honesty in its reportsing, as this interview with Julian Assange is a glaring example of that. Why bother with journalism schools when their is no real journalims in the mainstream. You can find it elsewhere, but elsewhere does not have the resources to get the new out to as many. This lacking shows the failure in the mainstream, the slanting of stories and censorship by omission or outright failure to report. These people ought to be ashamed to call themselves reporters or journalist, but that is the kind neoconservatives, not reality.
Apparently it is necessary to point out that what Assange did is exactly what the MSM does (or rather is supposed to do when it does its job) which is to publish leaked information and expose government lies and cover-ups.
The entire idea of journalism is predicated on that supposed conspiracy theory: that governments keep secrets and lie. The show 60 minutes in particular, as they chase people around with cameras and accuse them of lying. If governments did not lie and keep secrets, we would not need journalism.
This whole framing that somehow Assange is different from the media is false, as if he exists in some vastly different qualitative category than journalism. He is not doing free speech, these are not merely his views and opinions; he is doing journalism. It is my understanding the he performs a certain amount of due diligence before he publishes information, he gives people a chance to vet and reply in advance. What is different about him is that he does not ask his sources’ permission to publish, or grant them anonymity in exchange for access.
He does what journalists are supposed to do, and for that the MSM loathes him.
Assange believes the government keeps important secrets? And that mainstream media play along? That is kooky.
hey pete KOOKY??? I THINK YR KOOKY TOO!! FOR NOT…. UNDERSTANDING.. THE FULL JULIAN HERE!!
I just did a Google search on “governments lie.” There were thousands of hits. It seems that I am not the only person to believe so.
Most prestigious: “All governments lie” is probably I. F. Stone’s best-known statement
@McMike – great comment, I think you said it perfectly.
Say, OPEN YOUR MIND, what on earth are you trying to say? And, this is probably not worth the effort here, but all-caps and several exclamation points or question marks are the mark of an imbecile. My apologies if you were making some kind of elaborate, abstruse joke. It got right by me, kiddo.
I admit the Kroft was an SOB. However, he did allow Julian to correct misconceptions on most occasions. I would like to know Julian’s evaluation of the interview. Does anyone know how we could find out?
Absolutely, Julian is a hero of mine. It is difficult to defend against people who are usually rational thinking family members.
Come on people, don’t you know a subterfuge when you see one? Goodness, all the print that has been wasted over this. Just another cover up for what is really taking place. Also, one might consider 2 other aspects, 1-clean out the old garbage, 2-embarrass the State Department; read that as Clinton and “O”. Great for the future 2012 Election, wouldn’t you agree?
Norman –
Yes! It’s clear that Assange is just a pawn in the Clinton gang’s big plan to hurt your hamster.
I think Assange came across as a real class act on 60 Minutes. Steve Kroft, not so much.
Even here I think people are not quite understanding what Julian Assange is. He’s more a publisher than a journalist. A journalist goes out into the field, finds stories that need telling and brings them back to a newspaper or magazine publisher to be published. So, in essence, Assange really fits into the scheme of things more as a publisher than as a journalist, though I suppose he could conceivably be both. The other thing i find rather a shame and rather odd is that 25 years ago, it would have been 60 Minutes someone would bring a story like this to rather than Assange. These days, I find the stories I hear on 60 Minutes tend to be retread of things I heard elsewhere a year or two ago. In fact, some of their stories are really just fluff- like when Anderson Cooper is on. It’s a shame an news institution like 60 Minutes has been gutted in this way. It used to be news was about getting the scoop- getting the story before anyone else did. Now it’s more about repeating all the fluff the other guy said So, essentially Assange scooped everyone. He was nice enough to let the New York Times and a few others in on it. Perhaps what’s really going on in the media over Assange is outright jealousy. He beat everyone else out of the story of the decade after all. I think the Nobel Peace Prize nomination was well desrved and hope Assange and Wikileaks wins it.
I’ve had a conspiracy mentality ever since I learned about our shenanigans in Chile. // Jean Clelland-Morin
The Weekly blog. I love it for the much needed laugh each week. I realize though that it will be a tearful irony for the most part.
However, there does occasionally come a gem. And after having watched 60 minutes myself and marveling at the questions they asked as if they were exposing some evil corporate polluter, I wondered if they would recognize their own reflection if confronted with it. After all, 60 Minutes was the lone “wikileaks” of the 1960s, bringing that era’s evil revelations to public awareness.
I missed the set-up though, and appreciate that I’ve had time to calm down and can better appreciate the SNL-like quality to those opening lines.
60 Minutes was a program that once was a heroic purveyor of the truth just as Julian Assange is now. Watching this show reminded me why I don’t admire them any longer, and why I gave up on mainstream journalism of any kind more than a decade ago.
You might think whatever You want about the person Julian Assange – what is told and printed about him in mainstream media must not be taken litterally – but as a publisher and muckraker he definitly deserves his place in Our future history books.
When people like Joe Biden, Sarah Palin et consortes are yelling about high treason, imprisonment, hanging etc., it is a symptom of that there is something rotten in the state. The White House, State Department, Pentagon etc. cannot take for granted that classified material DOES NOT leak out, when ½ a million, certainly more, people have access to it. It is a sign of health when people mistrust the authorities and believe they have piles of shit to hide.
Look, we have been fed with fairy tales since the beginning of civilization, either from kings or from priests, but since the invention of the World Wide Web, it is hardly impossible to hide away uncomfortable facts for people – lies will be ripped into pieces, sooner or later.
As a comment to mark winget, I think it is about time for the American people to stand up for their fundamental and constitutional rights, before it is too late. When the Chinese creditors comes and urge You to pay the debt, it will be a VERY, VERY harsh and humilliating lesson for the yet only, but soon former, superpower on Earth – and You´ll bet that the rich tycoons in the big companies won´t pay the bill, YOU will pay the bill!!! I really hope that the bankers are shivering over what´s next on Wikileaks…
The World is full of armchair reformers. The problem is how to make them raise from their comfortable positions and DO something! You, mark winget, is in a position where You can spread information and opinions face to face. Make use of that opportunity!
I try to do the same from my little corner of Our planet, via the web, from a little house on an island in Sweden.
Mr Assange has every right to report whatever news he LEGALLY obtains,or is legally obtained.What do i mean by that?Well lets say someone has the ablomb to tape a secret meeting with the president.A rogue Senator lets say.Or someone bugs the oval office or the presidential home space in the white house(yes i know it is well protected,but for the sake of argument…)Should those recordings be given to Mr Assange for his learned disbursement? In the ideal of freedom of speech?
I think what Sarah was talking about in saying “hunt them down”,was to track, and capture those who had stolen(yes stolen)sensitive documents.Some of these people are in my eyes no better than spys.Note that Hilary Clinton and Barrack Obama agree with that assessment.
Joe Bidons full remarks were along those same lines.
You see you can not be a conduit for information possibly /probably taken by illegal means,and believe you will be free from prosecution.Mr Assange plays that game for his own profit and grandeur.I doubt he cares about the nobler aspirations of freedom past that.Sorry,yes i do think he has an ax to grind against this country.One interesting aspect is no- one has researched is why.
We’re all familiar with the way the label “liberal” is used to marginalize an opponent. Now we see how “conspiracy theorist” works just as well. The problem with labels is that they only serve to confuse. I watched 60 Minutes only because Julian Assange was being interviewed. But I long ago stopped watching what was once a brave and catalytic 60 Minutes. We need whistle blowers; we will always need whistle blowers to keep governments honest!
From one Julian to another, assange is
cIa
Steve Kroft, there are many thousands of you, limited, jealeouse and coward living upon public attention (thats the business of journalism) no matter what to say, how to say, what to silence, how to twist opinions. All of a sudden all you guys here are wrong because you keep forgetting “business first” which is the base of media, which makes it vulnerable like it does with all our governments worldwide! Hardly you can accept the dirty US foreign policy nor understand that it aint limited to the US but there is cero IQ when it gets to the root of it all. Money aint evil but the influences it got on simply everything, including on a honest government, is what we got to resolve. Media, foreign policies, cultures, economies, trade, everything will change for good if we remove the influential and speculative part of money, but yet you are not even capable to see how the entire US is conducted by a very small background and still believe money grows out of the hands of A government.
How does what Assange and Wikileaks have done benefited and in turn the USA by any of these leaks? In a word—nothing. A familiar tactic label your enemy with what you are or for and then condemn them for the mythical position.
A lot of the big news in the 60’s was gotten from illegally obtained documents.
Also – even though the wiki-leaks material and Julian Assange seem to be roundly condemned by mainstream media – their criticisms keep the material in the public eye, which may ultimately prove to be a good, especially if they get the Nobel Prize. As far as the State Department? Their reaction is probably as much from embarrassment as anything, and distancing themselves from whatever fallout there may ultimately be.
Obtaining documents illegally? If all secret documents had a reasoned and justifiable purpose for being secret – maybe it wouldn’t be such a great thing to obtain them illegally. One thing wiki-leaks has shown is that the label of secrecy is often used for things like job protection, which is not a really compelling reason for making them secret documents protected by law.
Personally, I hope the Nobel peace prize goes to the Egyptian people.
I second everything Victoria Park said in her post here. The fact that Croft throws his own profession under the bus without batting an eye is cause for all of us to be concerned about the ability of the 4th Estate to do its job as a watchdog for us all. The man clearly has no sense at all of the job of the press…scary! Maybe all those new assignments into triviality that reporters are now given has blinded them to their real job.
Many commentators above means that CBS 60 minutes has declined over teh past decades. I think they are right. The program has also appeared in Swedish television, to and fro, for at least two decades, first in the State Television, and later in commercial channels, and I´ve seen it sporadically over the years. The critics are right – 60 minutes HAS declined. The first times I saw it, some time in the late 80ies, early 90ies, I thought it was sharp and informing, but the few last times I´ve stumbled into it – often after midnight; it´s not broadcasted on primetime – I think it´s just another product of the Hollywoodization of the whole American society.
Once upon a time, State Departement and Pentagon implemented a search for a foolproof system for communication, which couldn´t collapse even in case of a nuclear attack. And today, in the days of Wikileaks, it – the World Wide Web – is proven just foolproof!! Every attempt to trace and close down Wikileaks is useless – it pops up in other places. In other words, the foolproof system has backfired upon its creators.
Maybe it is time for the diplomats, military authorities etc. to back the tape, and go back to reliable low-tech solutions. Letters on paper CAN be read by others, but it´s hard to spread them to the whole World with a clic…. I think it is easier to keep secrets that way.
Speaking of “Woodstein”…
…and, in particular, WaPo’s then Editor-In-Chief — Ben Bradlee — Kroft’s cheap labeling of Assange is also known in journalism as a “non-denial denial.”
As is Joe Biden’s piety and Sarah Palin’s uncontrollable butt springs about ones’ patriotic duty to lie for their government no matter what their conscience tells them. Worse, she will no doubt drone on about America’s “need” for protection from whomever she calls traitors and seditioners. And no doubt until the end of time. When Sarah isn’t hiding behind the flag, or the cross, the US Constitution is her the resort of last resort. No matter how little of it she’s read or even understands.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden remains in servitude to American Big Business and its MSM. One doesn’t need a crystal ball to predict what his next smear of a prisoner of conscience will be.
Don’t hold your breath that these folks will ever address the WikiLeaks accusations at face value — nor will they be any less vocal in their scapegoating of Assange and Bradley Manning. Political demagoguery demands that both be given a life sentence w/o parole in the dankness of Gitmo. International pressure might save Assange from such a fate. But Manning will probably never see the light of day unless we stand up for him.
Two generations ago, The New Yorker Magazine and Walter Winchell kept the fire to the feet of Iva Toguri d’Aquino — aka “Tokyo Rose.” She never was anything of the sort. And it’s not because no one could actually find a Radio Tokyo announcer calling herself “Tokyo Rose.” There were, in fact, over 20 English-speaking women that Japan used to broadcast to GIs and sailors in the Pacific. Toguri had little choice but to passively acquiesce and work for the Japanese government just to get a ration card. Yet somehow she managed to smuggle food and medicine to Allied prisoners, never succumbed to increasing Japanese pressure that she renounce her US citizenship, and revealed no military secrets to the enemy (since she didn’t have any to reveal). In spite of this, she served 10 years in a Federal prison for treason, then waited another 20 years for the US government to pardon her and restore her US citizenship.
In short, Iva Toguri was a hero, not a villain.
The similarity between Iva Toguri and Assange and Manning is all too striking and saddening. And it’s all just so much bullsh*t. America isn’t an empire in decline anymore. It’s in free fall.
Mark Winget, regulations came into being because business and toadies were abusing the public, selling things that were not what they claimed them to be. To protect the people, regulations were put in place that benefited the people, they were not implemented to screw the people. Government works to curb the greed of corporate types.
http://www.alternet.org/story/149892/5_ways_corporate_scavengers_are_making_big_money_off_of_our_economic_pain
As indicated above, this is what regulations are supposed to protect the public from.
In the Progressive Populist, it was reported that there were major violations by drug companies, including Pfizer, Glaxo-Smith Kline, Eli Lilly, Schering Plough, Bristol Myers, Squibb, AstraSeneca, TAP Pharmaceuticals, Merck, Serons, Purdue, Allergen, Novartis, Cephalon, Johnson & Johnson, Forest Laboratories, Sanofi_Aventis, Bayer, Mylan, Teva, and King Pharmaceuticals. Penalties under the Federal False Claims Act, no less than 165 violations by these companies since 1991. The penalties exceeds the defense industries overcharging fraud. The amount is greater than $20 billion dollars. The last five years has been the worst. Violations include hawking drugs that the uses for which are unproven and are dangerous. Pfizer paid $1.2 billion for illegal off label promotions. Among some of the violations was Medicaid and Medicare outright fraud from these drug companies. More violations like unlawful promotions, monopoliy practices, kickbacks, hiding study findings, poor manufacturing practices, environmental violations, financial violations, and illegal distributions. And these were just the ones who got caught.
Not included in the findings of the report, are outright counterfeiting, adding questionable ingredients in drugs from India and China due to the outsourcing by US and European drug companies. These drug companies are very powerful, and have over 400 lobbyists, while the DOJ is short staffed and short willed. States may start to hold these companies accountable. I think we should prosecute the CEOs by putting them in jail for violations by their companies, and in addition remove them from the lucrative market of the government led business if they ever violate the regulations.
And you think that regulations are bad??What would happen if we did not hold these drug companies accountable?
Yeah, Mr. Croft. The goverment lies, and the media play along. And you know it, too. Please read my new book, “Conscience of a Conspiracy Theorist” (algora.com) or visit my website, robertlockwoodmills.org
>> Assange believes the government keeps important secrets?
>> And that mainstream media play along? That is kooky.
Are you kidding?
If the CIA wants the New York Times to print something it gets
printed.
In any case, what the people need to be able to do is to verify.
Like Reagan of all people said, trust but verify, and the American
people should be able to know without a shadow of a doubt that
they have a free press.
Hey Fair,
On a similar note,, Have you actually recognized how every last left winger consistently turns out to be a paedophile, rapist or mysoginist? !!! (irony inform, irony alert)
Good Job!
The real irony is that the faux reporters and trolls are accelerating the demise of the nation they keep claiming they love. Twisting the truth is their addiction.