Labeled the media “trial of the century,” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s extradition hearing is currently taking place in London—although you might not have heard if you’re relying solely on corporate media for news. If extradited, Assange faces 175 years in a Colorado supermax prison, often described as a “black site” on US soil.
The United States government is asking Britain to send the Australian publisher to the US to face charges under the 1917 Espionage Act. He is accused of aiding and encouraging Chelsea Manning to hack a US government computer in order to publish hundreds of thousands of documents detailing American war crimes, particularly in Afghanistan and Iraq. The extradition, widely viewed as politically motivated, has profound consequences for journalists worldwide, as the ruling could effectively criminalize the possession of leaked documents, which are an indispensable part of investigative reporting.
WikiLeaks has entered into partnership with five high-profile outlets around the world: the New York Times, Guardian (UK), Le Monde (France), Der Spiegel (Germany) and El País (Spain). Yet those publications have provided relatively little coverage of the hearing.
Since the hearing began on September 7, the Times, for instance, has published only two bland news articles (9/7/20, 9/16/20)—one of them purely about the technical difficulties in the courtroom—along with a short rehosted AP video (9/7/20). There have been no editorials and no commentary on what the case means for journalism. The Times also appears to be distancing itself from Assange, with neither article noting that it was one of WikiLeaks’ five major partners in leaking information that became known as the CableGate scandal.
Guardian columnist Hadley Freeman (9/9/20) turned a reader’s question about “liv[ing] in a time of so much insecurity” into a bizarre rant against Julian Assange and his partner, Stella Moris.
The Guardian, whose headquarters are less than two miles from the Old Bailey courthouse where Assange’s hearing is being held, fared slightly better in terms of quantity, publishing eight articles since September 7. However, perhaps the most notable content came from columnist Hadley Freedman (9/9/20).
When asked in an advice article: “We live in a time of so much insecurity. But is there anything we can expect from this increasingly ominous-looking winter with any certainty?” she went on a bizarre tangential rant ridiculing the idea that Assange’s trial could possibly be “politicized,” also crassly brushing off the idea that his young children would never see their father again, and never answering anything like the question she was asked. Holding people to account “for a mess they could have avoided,” she notes, “is not ‘weaponizing’ anything — it is just asking them to do their jobs properly.” She also claimed that believing Assange’s trial was politicized was as ridiculous as thinking antisemitism claims were cynically weaponized against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, which, she meant to suggest, was a preposterous idea. This was not an off-the-cuff remark transcribed and published, but a written piece that somehow made it past at least one editor.
Like the Times, the Guardian appeared to be hoping to let people forget the fact it built its worldwide brand off its partnership with WikiLeaks; it was only mentioned in a forthright op-ed by former Brazilian president Lula da Silva (9/21/20), an outlier piece.
The Guardian should be taking a particularly keen role in the affair, seeing that two of its journalists are alleged by WikiLeaks to have recklessly and knowingly disclosed the password to an encrypted file containing a quarter-million unredacted WikiLeaks documents, allowing anyone—including every security agency in the world—to see an unredacted iteration of the leak. In 2018, the Guardian also falsely reported that Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort had conducted a meeting with Assange and unnamed “Russians” at the Ecuadorian embassy (FAIR.org, 12/3/18). And, as former employee Jonathan Cook noted, the newspaper is continually being cited by the prosecution inside the courtroom.
Der Speigel’s headline (9/7/20) reads: “Maximum Sentence: 175 Years in Prison.”
There were only two articles in the English or French versions of Le Monde (9/7/20, 9/18/20) and only one in either of Der Spiegel’s English or German websites (9/7/20), although the German paper did at least acknowledge its own partnership with Assange. There was no coverage of the hearings in El País, in English or Spanish, though there was a piece (9/10/20) about the US government thwarting a Spanish investigation into the CIA spying on Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London—accompanied by a photo of a protester against his extradition.
The rest of corporate media showed as little interest in covering a defining moment in press freedom. There was nothing at all from CNN. CBS’s two articles (9/7/20, 9/22/20) were copied and pasted from news agencies AP and AFP, respectively. Meanwhile, the entire sum of MSNBC’s coverage amounted to one unclear sentence in a mini news roundup article (9/18/20).
Virtually every relevant human rights and press freedom organization is sounding the alarm about the incendiary precedent this case sets for the media. The Columbia Journalism Review (4/18/19), Human Rights Watch and the Electronic Frontier Foundation note that the government includes in its indictment regular journalistic procedures, such as protecting sources’ names and using encrypted files—meaning that this “hacking” charge could easily be extended to other journalists. Trevor Timm, founder of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, told the court this week that if the US prosecutes Assange, every journalist who has possessed a secret file can be criminalized. Thus, it essentially gives a carte blanche to those in power to prosecute whomever they want, whenever they want, even foreigners living halfway around the world.
The United Nations has condemned his persecution, with Amnesty International describing the case as a “full-scale assault on the right to freedom of expression.” Virtually every story of national significance includes secret or leaked material; they could all be in jeopardy under this new prosecutorial theory.
President Donald Trump has continually fanned the flames, demonizing the media as the “enemy of the people.” Already 26% of the country (including 43% of Republicans) believe the president should have the power to shut down outlets engaging in “bad behavior.” A successful Assange prosecution could be the legal spark for future anti-journalistic actions.
Yet the case has been met with indifference from the corporate press. Even as their house is burning down, media are insisting it is just the Northern Lights.
Featured image: Photo of protester at Julian Assange’s extradition hearing that appeared in El País (9/10/20).
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Does the corpress honestly care about a threat to journalism, as they most always assiduously avoid engaging in it whenever it threatens the status quo, and as this lack of coverage of the trial and consistent credence to gummint charges against Assange attests?
A successful prosecution will simply give them an additional rationale to align their reporting with “national security interests”, as if they needed another one.
When you’re trying to outlaw journalism, silence whistleblowers & disappear truth; so oligarchy can do whatever it wants to us all. It’s not like, our duopoly’s pet media, or echo-chamber blogosphere is going to do much beyond an occasional 2-minute HATE, to gloat about what befalls BAD anarchists who show us things we don’t want to see? First, they came for the journalists. We don’t KNOW what happened after that?
Very well exposed. But hey ! What about the Australian media? Julian Assange is an
Australian. When our citizens overseas commit murders and drug trafficking, it is all over our media, about their plight in overseas justice systems – pages and pages, TV and radio broadcasts. Then the benevolent Australiangovernment bends over backwards to save their bacon. But when it comes to Julian Assange – only a few courageous mentions by the ABC .
Our whole media – News Corpse and the ABC ran a big campaign on “Press Freedom” – Assange didn’t get a mention. Why should I expect them to? Decades ago they pilloried Wilfred Burchett for reporting on Hiroshima bombing victims. Kowtowing to USA is the system here.
NY Times, GUARDIAN, LE MONDE, Der SPIEGEL . and EL PAIS, and the entire nation of Australia- SHAME ON YOU ALL. YOU all profited from the work of Julian Assange—-and yet now you leave him and act as if YOU did no wrong. NONE of your papers will ever be considered as news organizations again. Publishing important news is not wrong—-but turning on Assange and acting as if he is a criminal after profiting from his work —If I ever read any of your papers, I will assume that you all have sold out your sources—Profiting from Julian Assange work, you now turn on him–but even worse you have killed the belief that a FREE PRESS actually exists. SHAME. SHAME , SHAME on you —cowards all!
“I will assume that you all have sold out your sources” wrote Wondering Women. They have also sold out their souls.
Philo wrote: “First, they came for the journalists.” The media is killing us. They have no souls.
Between media censorship and their zeal to ignore their journalistic responsibilities–they prove they have no backbone, no courage.
Anti-Assange articles never mention his role in revealing US atrocities in Iraq, etc.
Pro-Assange articles never mention his unceasing efforts to boost Trump™ in 2016, his neglect of elementary journalistic ethics by dumping files without redacting innocent bystanders’ names, or how his massive egotism and craving to be a “player” ruined the concept of Wikileaks as a respectable and innovative platform for whistleblowers.
When, if ever, will FAIR report on the full Assange story?
Pierce doesn’t seem to understand a couple of things. Let me see if I can assist.
1. FAIR is a media bias watchdog, not a news reporting agency in and of itself. Hence, they will never “report on the full Assange story.” And they shouldn’t; it’s not part of their mission.
2. If there were “unceasing efforts to boost Trump (with the little TM thingy, signaling that you believe he was actually pro-Trump rather than anti-Clinton), they have been covered ad nauseum in the corporate media and you know it. If you have any compelling evidence for it, why didn’t you provide a link or two? I’ll tell you why: You don’t have any compelling evidence to support that ridiculous claim and as the article stated, the MSM went so far as to try tying Manafort to Assange when no such link existed. And yet they never actually retracted the story.
But at the end of the day, Assange was and is a journalist. Journalists are allowed to have biases and/or preferences so long as they are transparent about them. Wikileaks, a journalist outlet specializing in serving leaked materials to other journalists, committed no crime in turning over Hillary’s emails to anyone, hence the Trump administration indicted Assange not for that, but for Bush-era leaks that exposed war crimes and embarrassed the USA in its illegal war on Iraq. That’s what you not-so-cleverly anti-Assage folks pretending to be unbiased never seem to grasp. Obama didn’t indict Assange because they knew it would pose great dangers to journalism and the First Amendment in general and Trump couldn’t indict him for the DNC/Podesta leaks or anything remotely related to Russia and the 2016 election because there was no crime committed by Assange or Wikileaks.
They’re claiming he goaded Manning into stealing information way back in 2006 or something.
Hence they have gone way out on a limb and are prosecuting him for alleged violations of the Espionage Act, an ancient law that any reasonable or educated person can see immediately is completely irrelevant and holds no jurisdiction over a foreign national who had done nothing other than what a journalist or outlet for whistle blowers would do.
No proof has ever been offered that “innocent bystanders” have been hurt by any leaks. His alleged egotism has nothing to do with the story, and if you had any ‘meat’ on the bones of your claims you would have provided links and cogent analysis backing your opinions, but instead you provided name calling and vague allegations without any proof whatsoever. Just like what the DJT administration and his Justice Department are doing.
Misnamed Kyle –
1 – A media bias “watchdog” that consistently shows that much bias is not only vulnerable to serious critiques from those it monitors, it deserves them.
2 – I use “the little TM thingy” to remind people that Trump is not just a person, he’s a Brand®. Your leaping to misinterpretation reflects poorly on your insights – but the rest of your rant does the same.
If you really need a link to show Assange did everything he could to help Trump in 2016, start with https://duckduckgo.com/?q=assange+anti-clinton&t=ffsb&ia=web
“…the MSM went so far as to try tying Manafort to Assange when no such link existed.” [Sigh.] Manafort held secret talks with Assange in Ecuadorian Embassy
“Wikileaks… committed no crime in turning over Hillary’s emails …” – The apparent crime came in the stealing of those emails in the first place, cupcake.
I don’t know if fair.org limits the number of links per comment, but I’ll try one more: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange published the unredacted names of U.S. informants living in Iraq and Afghanistan that were contained in military war logs, creating a “grave and imminent risk” to innocent civilians … Do you really expect anyone to have a detailed list of what did or did not happen to human pawns in war zones?
” His alleged egotism has nothing to do with the story…” You see only what you want to see, don’tcha?
A clue, for free: just because something makes your idol look bad does not automatically make it untrue.
Huh – the html I used to embed some links didn’t work.
For the Manafort-Assange link, see https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/27/manafort-held-secret-talks-with-assange-in-ecuadorian-embassy
For the US informants name leak, see https://www.law360.com/articles/1311123/assange-put-sources-named-in-war-logs-at-risk-us-claims
If anyone endangered “innocent bystanders” it was The Guardian. Which you would have known if you actually read the article.
“The Guardian should be taking a particularly keen role in the affair, seeing that two of its journalists are alleged by WikiLeaks to have recklessly and knowingly disclosed the password to an encrypted file containing a quarter-million unredacted WikiLeaks documents, allowing anyone—including every security agency in the world—to see an unredacted iteration of the leak. In 2018, the Guardian also falsely reported that Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort had conducted a meeting with Assange and unnamed “Russians” at the Ecuadorian embassy (FAIR.org, 12/3/18). And, as former employee Jonathan Cook noted, the newspaper is continually being cited by the prosecution inside the courtroom.”
Alan,
Appreciate your work (and FAIR’s) as always, but your last paragraph would seem to be a bit naive. The corporate media of 2020’s house is not burning down. Their (wheel) house consists of being transcriptionists, apologists and reputation laundering agents for the real power and money. The Western corporate media is fully on-board with the private finance fueled wars for resources like the invasion of Iraq and occupation and attempted regime change of Syria. The U.S. faction, therefore, is in bed with the U.S. MIC and its mission and their form of ‘access journalism’ means never disrupting the status quo very much. Oh, occasionally they can get away with criticizing a policy or incident here and there, but the Judy Miller, Phil Donahue and now Julian Assange stories should make it perfectly clear. The corporate media and Western governments (and the oligarchs/private finance portfolios that hold them all captive) don’t stand to lose much at all if this horrible precedent facing Julian Assange and all true journalists is set. Their bread and butter will be unaffected at the end of the day. It is independent media and whistle blowers who will suffer – and only the leaks let out by those attempting to help the powers that be shall be allowed (see the nonsense “whistle blower” upon which the Ukrainegate impeachment fiasco was based).
Corporate media and its holding companies don’t care about journalistic freedoms. They care about their bottom line and their career trajectories within the completely captured institution that is somehow still known as Western journalism.
Hrrm.
I posted a reply, including a bare link and two in html which didn’t come through as links.
So I posted a reply to my reply, showing the URLs for the latter two.
And that 2nd reply not only did not appear when the page refreshed, my earlier reply disappeared too.
Nothing in the “how your comment data is processed” link below addresses this situation, but I suspect I triggered some sort of filter.
Because some such filters assess comments according to how quickly they’re posted, I will see what happens with this, and try again later with a perhaps fair.org-rules-compliant reply to Misnamed Kyle.
Here’s a consolidated version of my previous posts:
1 – A media bias “watchdog” that consistently shows that much bias is not only vulnerable to serious critiques from those it monitors, it deserves them.
2 – I use “the little TM thingy” to remind people that Trump is not just a person, he’s a Brand®. Your leaping to misinterpretation reflects poorly on your insights – but the rest of your rant does the same.
If you really need a link to show Assange did everything he could to help Trump in 2016, start with https://duckduckgo.com/?q=assange+anti-clinton&t=ffsb&ia=web
“…the MSM went so far as to try tying Manafort to Assange when no such link existed.” [Sigh.] See https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/27/manafort-held-secret-talks-with-assange-in-ecuadorian-embassy”
“Wikileaks… committed no crime in turning over Hillary’s emails …” – The apparent crime came in the stealing of those emails in the first place, cupcake.
I don’t know if fair.org limits the number of links per comment, but I’ll try one more: https://www.law360.com/articles/1311123/assange-put-sources-named-in-war-logs-at-risk-us-claims. Do you really expect anyone to have a detailed list of what did or did not happen to human pawns in war zones?
” His alleged egotism has nothing to do with the story…” You see only what you want to see, don’tcha?
A clue, for free: just because something makes your idol look bad does not automatically make it untrue.
What wasn’t mentioned is Assange is not on trial for any crime. He is appearing at a hearing with regard to a USA governmental request for his extradition. Further, he is being held under near solitary confinement conditions for no crime he has committed against England. Assange served 50 weeks imprisonment for some infraction either genuine or concocted…that means to me he had paid his debt to society and was essentially a free man scheduled to appear at a future “hearing”. Why he is still being incarcerated under Brit law under penal conditions for a mere hearing beggars all credibility. Additionally, why has he been denied bail for just a hearing? The entire business reeks of a political show trial in which the quasi-fascist party of BoJo is entirely responsible. Next thing we might hear is that BoJo & Co. will seek to re-activate the Star Chamber.
This might only be something interesting for the small minority that reads here and understands German. The superb german “Kabarett” (political cabaret) “Anstalt” broadcasted, at the big german station “ZDF” an entire show about Julian Assange. Don’t know if links are well liked here, but if you understand german simply duckduckgo “ZDF Anstalt” and choose the homepage. The first video link is the whole show. They play Sherlock Holmes and Watson to present the Assange case (and a bit about Nawalny, who, by the way, often shouted horribly against gay people, called refugees criminals, and so on…) .
A real lot of information! In fact we are still happy and at the same time puzzled that such a rare masterpieces are possible in our media. Most of all other things you hear there would meet the good and critical eyes of fair.org, believe me^^.