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Alternative facts: How the media failed Julian Assange

227 points by yesenadam 4y ago

antibasilisk 4y ago
The media did not fail Assange, failure is unintentional. The media actively colluded with interested parties in order to smear him, because he created a problem for them.
superkuh 4y ago
It's pretty clear what happened. People started to view the reporting of Wikileaks as evil or fake as soon as it negatively impacted $theirpoliticalside. Once these perceptions fell into place it was easy to disregard all the good, villify him personally, and ignore the authoritarian and illegal actions taken against him.
- snehk 4y ago
  It's really this simple. Shows that it was never about the fact that he provided information but about the fact that he provided information that could be used by $mypoliticalside.
  - mhh__ 4y ago
    They were working directly with them, not just leaving seeds for the birds to come for later. Make of it what you will but it's apparently an undisputed fact.
- barrysteve 4y ago
  It was well before the Trump election. Colbert told him that the authorities would come after him in his 2007 appearance on the Colbert Report. The minute he published Collateral Murder, a video maximizing publicity on a fatal error in America's war effort, that was it for Assange and Wikileaks.
  - starkd 4y ago
    And notice how these fatal errors are still occurring. The moment you question the proxy war in Ukraine, you are immediately labelled a Putin apologist. No calls for diplomacy. Meanwhile, 200,000 Ukrainians have been led to their deaths.
    - mrighele 4y ago
      Or notice how those that are pissed off when they are called Putinists call the Russian invasion of Ukraine a “proxy war” and blame the death of all those Ukrainian people on anybody except the culprit, I.e. Putin
      - starkd 4y ago
        Not what I said. You can blame Putin AND recognize this thing could have been avoided. The prime minister of Israel said they had a deal but the US said no.
    - AutumnCurtain 4y ago
      Thank God no Russians have died in this "proxy war" they were so unable to avoid
      - starkd 4y ago
        I didn't say no Russians have died. There have been horrible deaths on both sides. No one is winning in this war.
        Eumenes 4y ago
        US imperialism and the defense companies are winning this war
        starkd 4y ago
        Exactly. I don't think they are being fairly open about that. They aren't even hiding it.
- psychphysic 4y ago
  This is precisely it. My pet theory is that the true effect of "cancel culture" isn't really on rich/popular people. But the public cancelling means on an individual level social groups eventually become homogeneous in their views. The result is you must eject any idea, person or news source which doesn't 100% align with the current group values. The outcome is that entities which don't take sides are the real victims of cancel culture. Why is does CNN always come to the same conclusions and cover the same things? Why does Fox? It's because if they stray they are goners. WikiLeaks was truly neutral dumping all info it got. That was in no one's interest other than the diminishing open minded groups.
  - nico 4y ago
    > But the public cancelling means on an individual level social groups eventually become homogeneous in their views. > The result is you must eject any idea, person or news source which doesn't 100% align with the current group values. That’s essentially human society. We organize ourselves in races, countries, cultures, religions, sports teams, etc. We are constantly excluding others and trying to belong to certain groups. The issue is when it becomes extreme and a group decides that all other groups should be exterminated.
    - Spivak 4y ago
      And even stronger we institutionalize it and enforce it with violence. Enforcing cultural norms is the whole basis of our legal system.
    - vuln 4y ago
      > The issue is when it becomes extreme and a group decides that all other groups should be exterminated. In which given enough time all groups come to that last same conclusion. No group is safe once the extreme amass too much power.
    - krunck 4y ago
      > That’s essentially human society. That doesn't make it OK. The degenerate groupists in human society are the ones responsible for oppression and mass slaughter(war) whereas individual free thinking people are not.
- mhh__ 4y ago
  WikiLeaks arguably helped people to do that quite effectively. They've never really claimed to be neutral but especially around 2016 they were either getting played by or explicitly choosing to aid the trump campaign via the Russian state (at best as a messenger). III.B.3 of the Mueller report I don't know if they are evil but I find it very hard to view them as anything other than selectively truthful at best.
  - kerkeslager 4y ago
    Put yourself in Wikileaks' shoes for a second: you have information, you might even know that the source is malicious, but you also know the information is true. Your mandate as an organization is to release truths. Are they really supposed to not release the truth because it hurts the Democrats? I'm not a Trump supporter by any means, but the truth is the truth. If we only care about the truth when it favors us, I don't see how we're better than liars.
    - bandyaboot 4y ago
      Release the information when you get it and say, “do with this what you will.” Not at all what they did. They released in batches, for maximum effect, right up until the election. They knew exactly what they were doing.
      - the_third_wave 4y ago
        That is more or less what the New York Post did with the information on the "Hunter Biden Laptop". It did not work out very well for the New York Post, nor for what is now finally being admitted as "the truth" - this being that the device was his, that the material on the device was his, that the material was not "obtained by hacking". It did work out quite well for Hunter Biden and his family which seems to have been the intended result. Had Wikileaks done the same they would have met with the same fate: they would have been accused of being in bed with whatever enemy-du-jour could be concocted and the material would have been buried under miles of accusations.
- phphphphp 4y ago
  From the start, wikileaks was a partisan project masquerading as a righteous cause. Those of us old enough to remember their original releases (like “Collateral Murder”) remember that wikileaks was always about building a narrative rather than exposing the truth. Suggesting that people started thinking negatively about wikileaks once it came for “their side” is painfully revisionist. Many people believe wikileaks is a net good but despise Assange. Assange failed wikileaks, the media did not fail Assange.
  - namdnay 4y ago
    > Those of us old enough to remember their original releases (like “Collateral Murder”) That was very very far from being "their original releases". wikileaks used to be a real "wiki of leaks". it was quite glorious, a real goldmine for journalists to work through
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    Imho, if WikiLeaks had focused on being the Craigslist of information, without attempting to market themselves, they would have gotten a lot more public support. You can't transparently publish information and have an opinion.
    - psychlops 4y ago
      Why not? Why is public support necessary for transparently publishing information?
      - thunfischbrot 4y ago
        Wasn't that the whole idea behind Wikileaks? To not only be a platform to upload and publish random documents, and instead to provide context and work with writers to make it understandable for a wider audience? That's how I understood it at the time, that Assange was unhappy with the limited audience existing platforms were reaching. /e: I see my reply was less targeted towards your comment but the one above.
    - jancsika 4y ago
- psychlops 4y ago
  I don't really think you can lay the blame here on people or perceptions and I'm not sure how you drew that conclusion from the article. He was targeted by people in power and they laid an effective smoke screen and got rid of him.
- mjklin 4y ago
  A similar thing happened when Alexander Solzhenitsyn defected to the US from the USSR. As long as he was blasting the Soviets everybody listened, but when he started critiquing the US as well…his speaking invitations dried up.
  - dontlaugh 4y ago
    Solzhenitsyn was famously full of shit, according to most historians and his own wife. Not exactly a good comparison, the only similarity is the reaction of the US press.
- raincole 4y ago
  The use of $theirpoliticalside as if it's a variable is pretty interesting. Because in this case, it's almost a const.
- BashiBazouk 4y ago
  I thought the disillusionment around here with wikileaks had more to do with the way they had changed from careful curation, removing the personal information of those not involved, to just bulk dumps. Less that Hillary's emails were leaked and more that the personal information of lesser figures in and donors to the DNC were also released in mass. They had changed in perception from journalism to personal revenge against Hillary for her pursuing Assange as Secretary of State. The fact that the RNC had been hacked but emails not released helped in this perception...
  - 93po 4y ago
    > removing the personal information of those not involved, to just bulk dumps. This is often repeated anti-WL propaganda that isn't true. There is a vast amount of effort that goes into censoring leaks and it's by far the most time consuming part of the process. They spend literally months on it. Just because they chose not to censor something that you would have preferred for them to censor doesn't mean a tremendous amount of time and thought didn't go into that decision. > The fact that the RNC had been hacked but emails not released helped in this perception... This is also not true. Why would WL refuse to publish something if the source could go to literally thousands of other journalists? It wouldn't serve them at all to refuse.
    - giantrobot 4y ago
      > It wouldn't serve them at all to refuse. Because WikiLeaks had become the Julian Assange show and published releases based on his whims. The DNC e-mails hurt his "enemies" while RNC e-mails did not.
    - BashiBazouk 3y ago
      As opposed to your pro-WL propaganda that is blatantly false? Yes, what you describe is how I and I think many others generally viewed wikileaks up to 2016. With the DNC email leak, that changed: https://www.theregister.com/2016/07/22/wikileaks_keep_fighting_the_man_by_er_publishing_the_personal_details_of_ordinary_citizens/ https://www.theregister.com/2016/07/22/wikileaks_keep_fighti... One example news story of many... As to the RNC hack, I never said wikileaks had anything but the RNC was hacked and whatever was found was never released by the hacking organization. Whether this is intentional or just because what was found was not interesting or too old to matter, just the story circulating added to the perception wikileaks had changed.
- bayesian_horse 4y ago
  There was no need for villification. For whatever good Wikileaks did for "the truth" or people's curiousity, it was a danger to US troops and their allies from the first moments. That's got nothing to do with political views. And the charges against him are still perfectly legal. An "authoritarian" system would go about this completely differently.
- gWPVhyxPHqvk 4y ago
  It was easy to do all that because he actively put his thumb on the scale for the Republicans. > “We believe it would be much better for GOP to win.” https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks-election-clinton-trump/ https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks...
  - bakuninsbart 4y ago
    I wonder where his animosity towards Hillary Clinton came from, I guess we will never know.
    - kornhole 4y ago
      Imagine the amount of documents they reviewed from the cable leaks to the emails and more. If anybody had the most information from which to judge how dangerous a leader would be, it was probably Julian. He did want to impede the war machine by sharing truth to the world, but the volume of data could not be absorbed by most.
    - dontlaugh 4y ago
      Maybe butchering Libyans has something to do with it? Or even just her husband cutting welfare? Both US parties are neoliberal war hawks, sadly.
  - kornhole 4y ago
    In context of limiting the amount of war upon the rest of world, it is hard for me to disagree. Although the foreign policy is not much different between the party sides, the Democratic party is historically and continues to be the more war party. Look at the votes for sending $117B to Ukraine. The Democrats voted unanimously for it.
    - namdnay 4y ago
      I think the point of the Ukraine aid is to limit the amount of war being waged on the Ukrainians...
yesenadam 4y ago
What a sorry, shameful saga. I found this story linked to on rms' home page: > Our next rally for Julian Assange is Saturday, March 4 at 11:30 to 12:30pm. We will gather at Park St. Station on the Boston Common to speak out for Assange and gather signatures on our petition to our senators. (See how the media failed Julian Assange at Harper's Magazine.) https://stallman.org/ https://stallman.org/
- starkd 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 4y ago
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  - kerkeslager 4y ago
    Is there a problem?
    - starkd 4y ago
      No, no problem. Just an observation.
jonathanstrange 4y ago
The efforts to discredit Assange are a primary example of a successful smear campaign. It's not surprising that people are gullible to make such campaigns easy, character assassination always works when large government agencies are behind it for many years. I was actually surprised how long it took.
- 206lol 4y ago
  Here's the thing, though, Assange and WikiLeaks are complicated figures who have done good and evil things. They are fair targets for criticism, and it's genuinely ok for someone to draw the conclusion that, "given the criticism, I cannot support them". Yes, a deliberate smear campaign exists, but also these are institutions with complex histories. You cannot simply call anyone critical of them "gullible".
  - naasking 4y ago
    > Here's the thing, though, Assange and WikiLeaks are complicated figures who have done good and evil things What evil things, specifically?
    - zzzeek 4y ago
      He preferred the election of Donald Trump and worked to make that happen. His preferences in specific political outcomes are well known: https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks-election-clinton-trump/ https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks... So yes, that would be why $politicalside doesn't like him, because he aligned with a very specific, pro-fascist $politicalside (whether or not he is actually a fascist). downmod away folks but that's why $politicalside doesnt like Assange. He is extremely biased which makes the "journalist" angle look pretty weak. there's your answer
      - kerkeslager 4y ago
        Having a preference you don't like is pretty different from "doing evil". I mean, I don't like that preference either, but the documents leaked were real, and I haven't heard that Wikileaks/Assange had equivalent dirt on Trump they could have leaked and didn't.
anothernewdude 4y ago
[flagged]
- headsoup 4y ago
  You, like so many, are focusing on the ad hominem rather than the merits of the evidence and exposure. Why are we talking so much about Assange being in jail or not instead of those the information implicates?
- r3trohack3r 4y ago
  Let’s assume everything you’ve said is true. Do you believe it’s acceptable to revoke journalist’s protection for the reasons you’ve listed and jail them for the reasons you’ve listed? Are there any journalists you might agree with, that don’t share any of the traits of your rant, that are going to suffer downstream from you being okay with revoking journalistic protections on these conditions?
masfuerte 4y ago
There is an important missing detail. The Swedes agreed to interview Assange about the rape allegations in London but the British Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) put pressure on the Swedes not to. The CPS deleted the emails they sent to the Swedes and we only know of their existence because of a FOI request on the Swedish side. Why were the supposedly politically independent CPS so keen to get Assange extradited to Sweden? FWIW, the CPS was led at the time by Keir Starmer, current leader of the opposition.
- seagullz 4y ago
  The same machinery and MO that treacherously took down Jeremy Corbyn apparently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elp18OvnNV0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elp18OvnNV0
- pydry 4y ago
  There was also the released GCHQ emails declaring it "an obvious fit up" because of the timing of the prosecution.
  - foldr 4y ago
    This is fairly meaningless. It’s just some random people at GHCQ saying that they think it looks like a fit up, on the basis of the same publicly available information that everyone else had at the time.
    - DANmode 4y ago
      > random people at GHCQ
      - foldr 4y ago
        Not sure what your point is. It’s clear from what’s quoted in the emails that some GHCQ employees are simply speculating based on the timing of the rape allegations. That’s something that a bunch of people outside GHCQ were also doing at the time. The emails were handed over because they weren’t considered to be classified information. So it’s quite unlikely that they reveal discussions among people who had any inside knowledge about the Assange case. > The records were revealed by Assange himself in a Sunday night interview with Spanish television programme Salvados in which he explained that an official request for information gave him access to instant messages that remained unclassified by GCHQ. https://amp.theguardian.com/media/2013/may/20/julian-assange-gchq-messages-extradition https://amp.theguardian.com/media/2013/may/20/julian-assange... I don’t know anything about the internal workings of GCHQ, but one would hope that information is shared on a need to know basis. Assuming this to be the case, the vast majority of GHCQ employees would know no more about Assange than you or me.
nabla9 4y ago
Cockburn's story is not the full story. Assange is not charged only for doing journalism, such as revealing secret information. Assange is also charged for conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, and conspiring to do so. Journalists rightfully defend Assange only in the the first type of charges, but not in the second type. He should go to US and face charges. Assange stopped being journalist at some point and started actively participating in crimes not covered by journalist ethics.
- adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
  the problem is most of the evidence for that second charge is significantly lacking. most of it has already been proven fake (as shown by the article)
  - nabla9 4y ago
    Cockburn is just presenting Assange's side. He is leaving stuff out.
    - headsoup 4y ago
      That's not a response to the comment above's point.
- superkuh 4y ago
  >Assange is also charged for conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, and conspiring to do so. But if you read all the detailed reporting from Wired (and others) at the time, including interviews with the rat (Adrian Lamo, https://www.wired.com/2010/06/leak/ https://www.wired.com/2010/06/leak/ , https://www.wired.com/2010/05/lamo/ https://www.wired.com/2010/05/lamo/) who made up that claim to save his own butt, it's clear that that charge is false as well. Assange never commited computer intrusion himself and he also never encouraged others to do so. That was a lie the FBI forced Lamo into during the case against Manning.
  - nceqs3 4y ago
realjhol 4y ago
For all their claims to be intrepid truth seekers, the media today are simple weather vanes and mouth-peaces of regime power.
mint2 4y ago
Is it really a mystery why people turned on assange? In his later years his work became similar to that of breitbart, James okeef, and tucker Carlson. Regardless of what one thinks of those, There’s no question that their publications and intentions are extremely slanted. No surprise most of the country dislikes him
- deleted 4y ago
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- yucky 4y ago
  You mean Wikileaks released info that was incorrect, or just that they released info that makes people you support look bad?
  - ip26 4y ago
    Are those the only possible reasons you can imagine to dislike or mistrust a source of information?
    - yucky 4y ago
      The sad reality is the people who hate Assange most now are the ones who loved him for Collateral Murder, because it was damaging to their enemies. Once he released information that was just as accurate, but damaging to their political allies, all bets were off. Those are the facts.
      - mint2 3y ago
        I don’t even know what the “collateral murder” video was until googling it just now, so… err those facts mentions are “alternative facts”. A lot of Millennials (many of whom are disgusted by assanges selective war against democrats) were occupied with college and less tuned into politics other than being anti Iraq war and disliking bush. But facts smacks!
  - gWPVhyxPHqvk 4y ago
    Remember this? > “We do have some information about the Republican campaign,” And then they never actually released it. https://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/293453-assange-wikileaks-trump-info-no-worse-than-him/ https://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/2934...
chiefalchemist 4y ago
It's not who the media failed, but who the media protected. It's the same page from the same playbook...repeat X enough times - regardless of accuracy - and perception becomes reality. Nearly every major news organization practices this, shamelessly. It's a biz model based on eye-ball not journalism standards. It's a biz model that protects the few and the expense of properly informing the many.
wunderland 4y ago
Framing this as they do continues to “fail” him! It wasn’t bad journalism that “failed” Assange, it was a concerted effort to assassinate his character and distract from his reporting.
calibas 4y ago
There's authoritarianism, where government knows what's best for everyone and keeps secrets to "protect" its citizens. Then there's democracy, where the government is open and honest so the people can make informed decisions on how best to run their government. In my opinion, one of the best ways of identifying an authoritarian is to ask them their opinions on Snowden or Assange.
- wunderland 4y ago
  Which governments would you consider “open and honest” democracies?
  - calibas 4y ago
    It's a spectrum, and certain countries embody the ideal more than others. I don't think a completely open and honest democracy exists yet though.
    - fmajid 4y ago
      Iceland or Switzerland?
      - hulitu 3y ago
        > Iceland or Switzerland? Yeah, right. Switzerland, where contracts with private companies are censored so the public does not see how much money they lose.
        Gud 3y ago
        This is by democratic choice though. If the public don't want this, they can always hold a binding referendum. Unlike any other country on earth.
- shp0ngle 4y ago
  Isn't Putin nowadays for Assange and definitely for Snowden? This is a stupid test.
petesergeant 4y ago
> [Belmarsh] dubbed “Britain’s Guantánamo.” Oh come the heck on, it’s a standard British Category A prison. Any comparison to Gitmo are prima facie ludicrous and makes the rest of the article suspect
- psychlops 4y ago
  Not entirely: "Between 2001 and 2002, Belmarsh Prison was used to detain a number of people indefinitely without charge or trial under the provisions of the Part 4 of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, leading it to be called the "British version of Guantanamo Bay"." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM_Prison_Belmarsh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM_Prison_Belmarsh
  - petesergeant 4y ago
    It’s 21 years later now
    - psychlops 4y ago
      Perhaps there should be a time limit when people should forget that their government imprisoned people without trial or charges, however I suggest it should be greater than 21 years.
      - petesergeant 3y ago
        To be clear then, you think that the comparison between Belmarsh prison and Guantanamo Bay is an apt one?
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
awill88 4y ago
[flagged]
bandyaboot 4y ago
The impact Assange and Wikileaks have had in exposing nefarious government secrets shouldn’t be forgotten. But, the damage that they’ve suffered to their reputation is entirely deserved. I don’t believe for a second that they didn’t know what they were doing when they partnered with Russia in 2016 to help draw as much attention as possible to the DNC emails—that is, engaging in an asymmetric political operation. That’s confirmed by the way they released the information—spaced out for maximum effect right up until the election. At that point, any claim they had on being simply a force for transparency was given up.
- barbacoa 4y ago
  To be fair to WikiLeaks there is very little evidence that Russia had anything to do with the DNC hacks. The FBI never had access to the servers and the the whole Russia hacking narrative relies on the DNC's claim of "trust us when we said this is what happened". Similarly the recent Twitter revelations on Hamilton68 showed that the Russian bots on manipulating social media was more or less BS. Who know what really happened, but what may have happened was that the hacking was blamed on Russia instead of say China, or [insert foreign adversary] because the FBI panicked when trump was elected after using the Steele dossier to spy on his campaign and needed a narrative to justify their actions.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    > Who know what really happened, but what may have happened was that the hacking was blamed on Russia instead of say China Or it could have been leaked by someone who liked Bernie, or by some other naive fantasist with a pipe dream that the Democratic Party could hypothetically one day run a fair primary again. People are encouraged by the media to simply forget about the subjects of these leaks, and focus on the leaker. That's a tactic.
  - bandyaboot 4y ago
    > To be fair to WikiLeaks there is very little evidence that Russia had anything to do with the DNC hacks. The FBI never had access to the servers and the the whole Russia hacking narrative relies on the DNC's claim of "trust us when we said this is what happened". This is just not true. The Senate Intelligence Committee had multiple sources of information to conclude with little doubt that it was Russia and that Putin personally authorized the operation. They cited an investigation which found data had been exfiltrated to US based servers known to have been leased in connection with the GRU. And I get it, people that would typically frequent hn including myself want to see the specifics of that investigation and how that connection was made to the GRU. Obviously that would involve revealing intelligence sources, which isn’t going to happen. So yeah, of course you can choose to believe that everyone is lying about everything and that the Republican led committee chose to pass up an opportunity to embarrass and discredit the DCCC and DNC by telling the truth, but that seems a bit unlikely to me.
bayesian_horse 4y ago
Julian Assange has not been charged with exposing secrets or being inconvenient for the powers that be. He has been charged on the quite plausible accusation of helping Chelsea Manning illegally acquire these secrets. There are lines journalists (and you can debate if he is a journalist) are not supposed to cross, this is one of them. Most of the negative consequences in his life stem from him running from this accusation, and from the rape charges in Sweden. He'd like to frame it in a different light, understandably...
- mariusor 4y ago
  The timeline is actually a bit different. The US espionage charges came into the light after Ecuador revoked his asylum and Assange was arrested by the UK police. He was hiding on the suspicion that Sweden would extradite him to the US and everyone made fun of him and called him paranoid for 7 years.
  - bayesian_horse 4y ago
    As I said, he was hiding from rape and espionage/computer hacking charges. There's nothing fishy about either of those, conspiracy theories not withstanding. "Everyone made fun of him" is a large overstatement. He didn't want to face any of the three or four justice systems he was dealing with (Uk, Sweden, US and Australia) so he opted to go into Asylum in that embassy. He could have been convicted (or acquitted) of those charges and gotten pardoned by now.
    - mariusor 4y ago
      You're rewriting history. When he asked for asylum Assange was only seeking refuge from being questioned on Swedish soil about the rape allegations from 2010. When he was granted asylum however, he breached the bail conditions from the UK and there were indeed two governments after him. But, I repeat, no espionage/computer charges were known until 2018.
      - bayesian_horse 4y ago
stillbourne 4y ago
The era of alternative facts were kind of started with Julian Assange. The video "Collateral Murder" was heavily edited by Mr. Assange. It was damning enough without his edits, he didn't need to add his personal soundtrack and audio edits to the video. How Mr. Assange has become the poster boy of "leakers against the government" with his outrageous egotistical and dickish behavior is beyond me. Leakers should give "the facts" and "the truth" untarnished and free of modification.
- yesenadam 4y ago
  > How Mr. Assange has become the poster boy of "leakers against the government" with his outrageous egotistical and dickish behavior is beyond me So, who do you think it should be instead? (genuine question)
  - SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
    Edward Snowden would be the closest to what I have, but before anyone starts pointing out his shortcomings, we can't assume that the perfect poster boy exists already. Maybe they don't, yet.
  - stillbourne 3y ago
    I like the "John Doe" from the Panama Papers. Remained anonymous, spread his message, didn't add anything unnecessary and remained out of public spectacle.
rejectfinite 4y ago
Mirror: https://web.archive.org/web/20230319140022/https://harpers.org/archive/2023/03/alternative-facts-how-the-media-failed-julian-assange/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230319140022/https://harpers.o...
fmajid 4y ago
There are some signs new Australian PM Albanese has been quietly working to secure the release of Assange, but he is now a broken man after a decade of effective imprisonment and the last few years of torture. The deterrent effect against any would-be whistleblowers has been achieved.
- TheHappyOddish 4y ago
  Are you joking? He used it as a talking point during his campaign, now he's hand waving every time he's asked about it. Please prove me wrong and show me these signs. Albo's no different to the last 6 who had the job.
- melast 3y ago
  There are zero signs, in fact we have proof they haven't lobbied anybody. https://michaelwest.com.au/documents-show-no-sign-albanese-government-lobbied-the-us-to-bring-julian-assange-home/ https://michaelwest.com.au/documents-show-no-sign-albanese-g...
neonate 4y ago
http://web.archive.org/web/20230319140022/https://harpers.org/archive/2023/03/alternative-facts-how-the-media-failed-julian-assange/ http://web.archive.org/web/20230319140022/https://harpers.or...
webdoodle 3y ago
Some of the independent journalists may have failed Assange, but the corporate mockingbird media intentionally maligned him, then later ignored him.

227 points by yesenadam 4y ago

The media did not fail Assange, failure is unintentional. The media actively colluded with interested parties in order to smear him, because he created a problem for them.

superkuh 4y ago

It's pretty clear what happened. People started to view the reporting of Wikileaks as evil or fake as soon as it negatively impacted $theirpoliticalside. Once these perceptions fell into place it was easy to disregard all the good, villify him personally, and ignore the authoritarian and illegal actions taken against him.

snehk 4y ago
It's really this simple. Shows that it was never about the fact that he provided information but about the fact that he provided information that could be used by $mypoliticalside.
- mhh__ 4y ago
  They were working directly with them, not just leaving seeds for the birds to come for later. Make of it what you will but it's apparently an undisputed fact.
barrysteve 4y ago
It was well before the Trump election. Colbert told him that the authorities would come after him in his 2007 appearance on the Colbert Report. The minute he published Collateral Murder, a video maximizing publicity on a fatal error in America's war effort, that was it for Assange and Wikileaks.
- starkd 4y ago
  And notice how these fatal errors are still occurring. The moment you question the proxy war in Ukraine, you are immediately labelled a Putin apologist. No calls for diplomacy. Meanwhile, 200,000 Ukrainians have been led to their deaths.
  - mrighele 4y ago
    Or notice how those that are pissed off when they are called Putinists call the Russian invasion of Ukraine a “proxy war” and blame the death of all those Ukrainian people on anybody except the culprit, I.e. Putin
    - starkd 4y ago
      Not what I said. You can blame Putin AND recognize this thing could have been avoided. The prime minister of Israel said they had a deal but the US said no.
  - AutumnCurtain 4y ago
    Thank God no Russians have died in this "proxy war" they were so unable to avoid
    - starkd 4y ago
      I didn't say no Russians have died. There have been horrible deaths on both sides. No one is winning in this war.
      - Eumenes 4y ago
        US imperialism and the defense companies are winning this war
        starkd 4y ago
        Exactly. I don't think they are being fairly open about that. They aren't even hiding it.
psychphysic 4y ago
This is precisely it. My pet theory is that the true effect of "cancel culture" isn't really on rich/popular people. But the public cancelling means on an individual level social groups eventually become homogeneous in their views. The result is you must eject any idea, person or news source which doesn't 100% align with the current group values. The outcome is that entities which don't take sides are the real victims of cancel culture. Why is does CNN always come to the same conclusions and cover the same things? Why does Fox? It's because if they stray they are goners. WikiLeaks was truly neutral dumping all info it got. That was in no one's interest other than the diminishing open minded groups.
- nico 4y ago
  > But the public cancelling means on an individual level social groups eventually become homogeneous in their views. > The result is you must eject any idea, person or news source which doesn't 100% align with the current group values. That’s essentially human society. We organize ourselves in races, countries, cultures, religions, sports teams, etc. We are constantly excluding others and trying to belong to certain groups. The issue is when it becomes extreme and a group decides that all other groups should be exterminated.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    And even stronger we institutionalize it and enforce it with violence. Enforcing cultural norms is the whole basis of our legal system.
  - vuln 4y ago
    > The issue is when it becomes extreme and a group decides that all other groups should be exterminated. In which given enough time all groups come to that last same conclusion. No group is safe once the extreme amass too much power.
  - krunck 4y ago
    > That’s essentially human society. That doesn't make it OK. The degenerate groupists in human society are the ones responsible for oppression and mass slaughter(war) whereas individual free thinking people are not.
mhh__ 4y ago
WikiLeaks arguably helped people to do that quite effectively. They've never really claimed to be neutral but especially around 2016 they were either getting played by or explicitly choosing to aid the trump campaign via the Russian state (at best as a messenger). III.B.3 of the Mueller report I don't know if they are evil but I find it very hard to view them as anything other than selectively truthful at best.
- kerkeslager 4y ago
  Put yourself in Wikileaks' shoes for a second: you have information, you might even know that the source is malicious, but you also know the information is true. Your mandate as an organization is to release truths. Are they really supposed to not release the truth because it hurts the Democrats? I'm not a Trump supporter by any means, but the truth is the truth. If we only care about the truth when it favors us, I don't see how we're better than liars.
  - bandyaboot 4y ago
    Release the information when you get it and say, “do with this what you will.” Not at all what they did. They released in batches, for maximum effect, right up until the election. They knew exactly what they were doing.
    - the_third_wave 4y ago
      That is more or less what the New York Post did with the information on the "Hunter Biden Laptop". It did not work out very well for the New York Post, nor for what is now finally being admitted as "the truth" - this being that the device was his, that the material on the device was his, that the material was not "obtained by hacking". It did work out quite well for Hunter Biden and his family which seems to have been the intended result. Had Wikileaks done the same they would have met with the same fate: they would have been accused of being in bed with whatever enemy-du-jour could be concocted and the material would have been buried under miles of accusations.
phphphphp 4y ago
From the start, wikileaks was a partisan project masquerading as a righteous cause. Those of us old enough to remember their original releases (like “Collateral Murder”) remember that wikileaks was always about building a narrative rather than exposing the truth. Suggesting that people started thinking negatively about wikileaks once it came for “their side” is painfully revisionist. Many people believe wikileaks is a net good but despise Assange. Assange failed wikileaks, the media did not fail Assange.
- namdnay 4y ago
  > Those of us old enough to remember their original releases (like “Collateral Murder”) That was very very far from being "their original releases". wikileaks used to be a real "wiki of leaks". it was quite glorious, a real goldmine for journalists to work through
- ethbr0 4y ago
  Imho, if WikiLeaks had focused on being the Craigslist of information, without attempting to market themselves, they would have gotten a lot more public support. You can't transparently publish information and have an opinion.
  - psychlops 4y ago
    Why not? Why is public support necessary for transparently publishing information?
    - thunfischbrot 4y ago
      Wasn't that the whole idea behind Wikileaks? To not only be a platform to upload and publish random documents, and instead to provide context and work with writers to make it understandable for a wider audience? That's how I understood it at the time, that Assange was unhappy with the limited audience existing platforms were reaching. /e: I see my reply was less targeted towards your comment but the one above.
  - jancsika 4y ago
psychlops 4y ago
I don't really think you can lay the blame here on people or perceptions and I'm not sure how you drew that conclusion from the article. He was targeted by people in power and they laid an effective smoke screen and got rid of him.
mjklin 4y ago
A similar thing happened when Alexander Solzhenitsyn defected to the US from the USSR. As long as he was blasting the Soviets everybody listened, but when he started critiquing the US as well…his speaking invitations dried up.
- dontlaugh 4y ago
  Solzhenitsyn was famously full of shit, according to most historians and his own wife. Not exactly a good comparison, the only similarity is the reaction of the US press.
raincole 4y ago
The use of $theirpoliticalside as if it's a variable is pretty interesting. Because in this case, it's almost a const.
BashiBazouk 4y ago
I thought the disillusionment around here with wikileaks had more to do with the way they had changed from careful curation, removing the personal information of those not involved, to just bulk dumps. Less that Hillary's emails were leaked and more that the personal information of lesser figures in and donors to the DNC were also released in mass. They had changed in perception from journalism to personal revenge against Hillary for her pursuing Assange as Secretary of State. The fact that the RNC had been hacked but emails not released helped in this perception...
- 93po 4y ago
  > removing the personal information of those not involved, to just bulk dumps. This is often repeated anti-WL propaganda that isn't true. There is a vast amount of effort that goes into censoring leaks and it's by far the most time consuming part of the process. They spend literally months on it. Just because they chose not to censor something that you would have preferred for them to censor doesn't mean a tremendous amount of time and thought didn't go into that decision. > The fact that the RNC had been hacked but emails not released helped in this perception... This is also not true. Why would WL refuse to publish something if the source could go to literally thousands of other journalists? It wouldn't serve them at all to refuse.
  - giantrobot 4y ago
    > It wouldn't serve them at all to refuse. Because WikiLeaks had become the Julian Assange show and published releases based on his whims. The DNC e-mails hurt his "enemies" while RNC e-mails did not.
  - BashiBazouk 3y ago
    As opposed to your pro-WL propaganda that is blatantly false? Yes, what you describe is how I and I think many others generally viewed wikileaks up to 2016. With the DNC email leak, that changed: https://www.theregister.com/2016/07/22/wikileaks_keep_fighting_the_man_by_er_publishing_the_personal_details_of_ordinary_citizens/ https://www.theregister.com/2016/07/22/wikileaks_keep_fighti... One example news story of many... As to the RNC hack, I never said wikileaks had anything but the RNC was hacked and whatever was found was never released by the hacking organization. Whether this is intentional or just because what was found was not interesting or too old to matter, just the story circulating added to the perception wikileaks had changed.
bayesian_horse 4y ago
There was no need for villification. For whatever good Wikileaks did for "the truth" or people's curiousity, it was a danger to US troops and their allies from the first moments. That's got nothing to do with political views. And the charges against him are still perfectly legal. An "authoritarian" system would go about this completely differently.
gWPVhyxPHqvk 4y ago
It was easy to do all that because he actively put his thumb on the scale for the Republicans. > “We believe it would be much better for GOP to win.” https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks-election-clinton-trump/ https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks...
- bakuninsbart 4y ago
  I wonder where his animosity towards Hillary Clinton came from, I guess we will never know.
  - kornhole 4y ago
    Imagine the amount of documents they reviewed from the cable leaks to the emails and more. If anybody had the most information from which to judge how dangerous a leader would be, it was probably Julian. He did want to impede the war machine by sharing truth to the world, but the volume of data could not be absorbed by most.
  - dontlaugh 4y ago
    Maybe butchering Libyans has something to do with it? Or even just her husband cutting welfare? Both US parties are neoliberal war hawks, sadly.
- kornhole 4y ago
  In context of limiting the amount of war upon the rest of world, it is hard for me to disagree. Although the foreign policy is not much different between the party sides, the Democratic party is historically and continues to be the more war party. Look at the votes for sending $117B to Ukraine. The Democrats voted unanimously for it.
  - namdnay 4y ago
    I think the point of the Ukraine aid is to limit the amount of war being waged on the Ukrainians...

yesenadam 4y ago

What a sorry, shameful saga. I found this story linked to on rms' home page: > Our next rally for Julian Assange is Saturday, March 4 at 11:30 to 12:30pm. We will gather at Park St. Station on the Boston Common to speak out for Assange and gather signatures on our petition to our senators. (See how the media failed Julian Assange at Harper's Magazine.) https://stallman.org/ https://stallman.org/

starkd 4y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- kerkeslager 4y ago
  Is there a problem?
  - starkd 4y ago
    No, no problem. Just an observation.

jonathanstrange 4y ago

The efforts to discredit Assange are a primary example of a successful smear campaign. It's not surprising that people are gullible to make such campaigns easy, character assassination always works when large government agencies are behind it for many years. I was actually surprised how long it took.

206lol 4y ago
Here's the thing, though, Assange and WikiLeaks are complicated figures who have done good and evil things. They are fair targets for criticism, and it's genuinely ok for someone to draw the conclusion that, "given the criticism, I cannot support them". Yes, a deliberate smear campaign exists, but also these are institutions with complex histories. You cannot simply call anyone critical of them "gullible".
- naasking 4y ago
  > Here's the thing, though, Assange and WikiLeaks are complicated figures who have done good and evil things What evil things, specifically?
  - zzzeek 4y ago
    He preferred the election of Donald Trump and worked to make that happen. His preferences in specific political outcomes are well known: https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks-election-clinton-trump/ https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/julian-assange-wikileaks... So yes, that would be why $politicalside doesn't like him, because he aligned with a very specific, pro-fascist $politicalside (whether or not he is actually a fascist). downmod away folks but that's why $politicalside doesnt like Assange. He is extremely biased which makes the "journalist" angle look pretty weak. there's your answer
    - kerkeslager 4y ago
      Having a preference you don't like is pretty different from "doing evil". I mean, I don't like that preference either, but the documents leaked were real, and I haven't heard that Wikileaks/Assange had equivalent dirt on Trump they could have leaked and didn't.

anothernewdude 4y ago

[flagged]

headsoup 4y ago
You, like so many, are focusing on the ad hominem rather than the merits of the evidence and exposure. Why are we talking so much about Assange being in jail or not instead of those the information implicates?
r3trohack3r 4y ago
Let’s assume everything you’ve said is true. Do you believe it’s acceptable to revoke journalist’s protection for the reasons you’ve listed and jail them for the reasons you’ve listed? Are there any journalists you might agree with, that don’t share any of the traits of your rant, that are going to suffer downstream from you being okay with revoking journalistic protections on these conditions?

masfuerte 4y ago

There is an important missing detail. The Swedes agreed to interview Assange about the rape allegations in London but the British Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) put pressure on the Swedes not to. The CPS deleted the emails they sent to the Swedes and we only know of their existence because of a FOI request on the Swedish side. Why were the supposedly politically independent CPS so keen to get Assange extradited to Sweden? FWIW, the CPS was led at the time by Keir Starmer, current leader of the opposition.

seagullz 4y ago
The same machinery and MO that treacherously took down Jeremy Corbyn apparently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elp18OvnNV0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elp18OvnNV0
pydry 4y ago
There was also the released GCHQ emails declaring it "an obvious fit up" because of the timing of the prosecution.
- foldr 4y ago
  This is fairly meaningless. It’s just some random people at GHCQ saying that they think it looks like a fit up, on the basis of the same publicly available information that everyone else had at the time.
  - DANmode 4y ago
    > random people at GHCQ
    - foldr 4y ago
      Not sure what your point is. It’s clear from what’s quoted in the emails that some GHCQ employees are simply speculating based on the timing of the rape allegations. That’s something that a bunch of people outside GHCQ were also doing at the time. The emails were handed over because they weren’t considered to be classified information. So it’s quite unlikely that they reveal discussions among people who had any inside knowledge about the Assange case. > The records were revealed by Assange himself in a Sunday night interview with Spanish television programme Salvados in which he explained that an official request for information gave him access to instant messages that remained unclassified by GCHQ. https://amp.theguardian.com/media/2013/may/20/julian-assange-gchq-messages-extradition https://amp.theguardian.com/media/2013/may/20/julian-assange... I don’t know anything about the internal workings of GCHQ, but one would hope that information is shared on a need to know basis. Assuming this to be the case, the vast majority of GHCQ employees would know no more about Assange than you or me.

nabla9 4y ago

Cockburn's story is not the full story. Assange is not charged only for doing journalism, such as revealing secret information. Assange is also charged for conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, and conspiring to do so. Journalists rightfully defend Assange only in the the first type of charges, but not in the second type. He should go to US and face charges. Assange stopped being journalist at some point and started actively participating in crimes not covered by journalist ethics.

adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
the problem is most of the evidence for that second charge is significantly lacking. most of it has already been proven fake (as shown by the article)
- nabla9 4y ago
  Cockburn is just presenting Assange's side. He is leaving stuff out.
  - headsoup 4y ago
    That's not a response to the comment above's point.
superkuh 4y ago
>Assange is also charged for conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, and conspiring to do so. But if you read all the detailed reporting from Wired (and others) at the time, including interviews with the rat (Adrian Lamo, https://www.wired.com/2010/06/leak/ https://www.wired.com/2010/06/leak/ , https://www.wired.com/2010/05/lamo/ https://www.wired.com/2010/05/lamo/) who made up that claim to save his own butt, it's clear that that charge is false as well. Assange never commited computer intrusion himself and he also never encouraged others to do so. That was a lie the FBI forced Lamo into during the case against Manning.
- nceqs3 4y ago

realjhol 4y ago

For all their claims to be intrepid truth seekers, the media today are simple weather vanes and mouth-peaces of regime power.

mint2 4y ago

Is it really a mystery why people turned on assange? In his later years his work became similar to that of breitbart, James okeef, and tucker Carlson. Regardless of what one thinks of those, There’s no question that their publications and intentions are extremely slanted. No surprise most of the country dislikes him

deleted 4y ago
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yucky 4y ago
You mean Wikileaks released info that was incorrect, or just that they released info that makes people you support look bad?
- ip26 4y ago
  Are those the only possible reasons you can imagine to dislike or mistrust a source of information?
  - yucky 4y ago
    The sad reality is the people who hate Assange most now are the ones who loved him for Collateral Murder, because it was damaging to their enemies. Once he released information that was just as accurate, but damaging to their political allies, all bets were off. Those are the facts.
    - mint2 3y ago
      I don’t even know what the “collateral murder” video was until googling it just now, so… err those facts mentions are “alternative facts”. A lot of Millennials (many of whom are disgusted by assanges selective war against democrats) were occupied with college and less tuned into politics other than being anti Iraq war and disliking bush. But facts smacks!
- gWPVhyxPHqvk 4y ago
  Remember this? > “We do have some information about the Republican campaign,” And then they never actually released it. https://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/293453-assange-wikileaks-trump-info-no-worse-than-him/ https://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/2934...

chiefalchemist 4y ago

It's not who the media failed, but who the media protected. It's the same page from the same playbook...repeat X enough times - regardless of accuracy - and perception becomes reality. Nearly every major news organization practices this, shamelessly. It's a biz model based on eye-ball not journalism standards. It's a biz model that protects the few and the expense of properly informing the many.

wunderland 4y ago

Framing this as they do continues to “fail” him! It wasn’t bad journalism that “failed” Assange, it was a concerted effort to assassinate his character and distract from his reporting.

calibas 4y ago

There's authoritarianism, where government knows what's best for everyone and keeps secrets to "protect" its citizens. Then there's democracy, where the government is open and honest so the people can make informed decisions on how best to run their government. In my opinion, one of the best ways of identifying an authoritarian is to ask them their opinions on Snowden or Assange.

wunderland 4y ago
Which governments would you consider “open and honest” democracies?
- calibas 4y ago
  It's a spectrum, and certain countries embody the ideal more than others. I don't think a completely open and honest democracy exists yet though.
  - fmajid 4y ago
    Iceland or Switzerland?
    - hulitu 3y ago
      > Iceland or Switzerland? Yeah, right. Switzerland, where contracts with private companies are censored so the public does not see how much money they lose.
      - Gud 3y ago
        This is by democratic choice though. If the public don't want this, they can always hold a binding referendum. Unlike any other country on earth.
shp0ngle 4y ago
Isn't Putin nowadays for Assange and definitely for Snowden? This is a stupid test.

petesergeant 4y ago

> [Belmarsh] dubbed “Britain’s Guantánamo.” Oh come the heck on, it’s a standard British Category A prison. Any comparison to Gitmo are prima facie ludicrous and makes the rest of the article suspect

psychlops 4y ago
Not entirely: "Between 2001 and 2002, Belmarsh Prison was used to detain a number of people indefinitely without charge or trial under the provisions of the Part 4 of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, leading it to be called the "British version of Guantanamo Bay"." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM_Prison_Belmarsh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM_Prison_Belmarsh
- petesergeant 4y ago
  It’s 21 years later now
  - psychlops 4y ago
    Perhaps there should be a time limit when people should forget that their government imprisoned people without trial or charges, however I suggest it should be greater than 21 years.
    - petesergeant 3y ago
      To be clear then, you think that the comparison between Belmarsh prison and Guantanamo Bay is an apt one?
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]

awill88 4y ago

[flagged]

bandyaboot 4y ago

The impact Assange and Wikileaks have had in exposing nefarious government secrets shouldn’t be forgotten. But, the damage that they’ve suffered to their reputation is entirely deserved. I don’t believe for a second that they didn’t know what they were doing when they partnered with Russia in 2016 to help draw as much attention as possible to the DNC emails—that is, engaging in an asymmetric political operation. That’s confirmed by the way they released the information—spaced out for maximum effect right up until the election. At that point, any claim they had on being simply a force for transparency was given up.

barbacoa 4y ago
To be fair to WikiLeaks there is very little evidence that Russia had anything to do with the DNC hacks. The FBI never had access to the servers and the the whole Russia hacking narrative relies on the DNC's claim of "trust us when we said this is what happened". Similarly the recent Twitter revelations on Hamilton68 showed that the Russian bots on manipulating social media was more or less BS. Who know what really happened, but what may have happened was that the hacking was blamed on Russia instead of say China, or [insert foreign adversary] because the FBI panicked when trump was elected after using the Steele dossier to spy on his campaign and needed a narrative to justify their actions.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  > Who know what really happened, but what may have happened was that the hacking was blamed on Russia instead of say China Or it could have been leaked by someone who liked Bernie, or by some other naive fantasist with a pipe dream that the Democratic Party could hypothetically one day run a fair primary again. People are encouraged by the media to simply forget about the subjects of these leaks, and focus on the leaker. That's a tactic.
- bandyaboot 4y ago
  > To be fair to WikiLeaks there is very little evidence that Russia had anything to do with the DNC hacks. The FBI never had access to the servers and the the whole Russia hacking narrative relies on the DNC's claim of "trust us when we said this is what happened". This is just not true. The Senate Intelligence Committee had multiple sources of information to conclude with little doubt that it was Russia and that Putin personally authorized the operation. They cited an investigation which found data had been exfiltrated to US based servers known to have been leased in connection with the GRU. And I get it, people that would typically frequent hn including myself want to see the specifics of that investigation and how that connection was made to the GRU. Obviously that would involve revealing intelligence sources, which isn’t going to happen. So yeah, of course you can choose to believe that everyone is lying about everything and that the Republican led committee chose to pass up an opportunity to embarrass and discredit the DCCC and DNC by telling the truth, but that seems a bit unlikely to me.

bayesian_horse 4y ago

Julian Assange has not been charged with exposing secrets or being inconvenient for the powers that be. He has been charged on the quite plausible accusation of helping Chelsea Manning illegally acquire these secrets. There are lines journalists (and you can debate if he is a journalist) are not supposed to cross, this is one of them. Most of the negative consequences in his life stem from him running from this accusation, and from the rape charges in Sweden. He'd like to frame it in a different light, understandably...

mariusor 4y ago
The timeline is actually a bit different. The US espionage charges came into the light after Ecuador revoked his asylum and Assange was arrested by the UK police. He was hiding on the suspicion that Sweden would extradite him to the US and everyone made fun of him and called him paranoid for 7 years.
- bayesian_horse 4y ago
  As I said, he was hiding from rape and espionage/computer hacking charges. There's nothing fishy about either of those, conspiracy theories not withstanding. "Everyone made fun of him" is a large overstatement. He didn't want to face any of the three or four justice systems he was dealing with (Uk, Sweden, US and Australia) so he opted to go into Asylum in that embassy. He could have been convicted (or acquitted) of those charges and gotten pardoned by now.
  - mariusor 4y ago
    You're rewriting history. When he asked for asylum Assange was only seeking refuge from being questioned on Swedish soil about the rape allegations from 2010. When he was granted asylum however, he breached the bail conditions from the UK and there were indeed two governments after him. But, I repeat, no espionage/computer charges were known until 2018.
    - bayesian_horse 4y ago

stillbourne 4y ago

The era of alternative facts were kind of started with Julian Assange. The video "Collateral Murder" was heavily edited by Mr. Assange. It was damning enough without his edits, he didn't need to add his personal soundtrack and audio edits to the video. How Mr. Assange has become the poster boy of "leakers against the government" with his outrageous egotistical and dickish behavior is beyond me. Leakers should give "the facts" and "the truth" untarnished and free of modification.

yesenadam 4y ago
> How Mr. Assange has become the poster boy of "leakers against the government" with his outrageous egotistical and dickish behavior is beyond me So, who do you think it should be instead? (genuine question)
- SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
  Edward Snowden would be the closest to what I have, but before anyone starts pointing out his shortcomings, we can't assume that the perfect poster boy exists already. Maybe they don't, yet.
- stillbourne 3y ago
  I like the "John Doe" from the Panama Papers. Remained anonymous, spread his message, didn't add anything unnecessary and remained out of public spectacle.

rejectfinite 4y ago

Mirror: https://web.archive.org/web/20230319140022/https://harpers.org/archive/2023/03/alternative-facts-how-the-media-failed-julian-assange/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230319140022/https://harpers.o...

fmajid 4y ago

There are some signs new Australian PM Albanese has been quietly working to secure the release of Assange, but he is now a broken man after a decade of effective imprisonment and the last few years of torture. The deterrent effect against any would-be whistleblowers has been achieved.

TheHappyOddish 4y ago
Are you joking? He used it as a talking point during his campaign, now he's hand waving every time he's asked about it. Please prove me wrong and show me these signs. Albo's no different to the last 6 who had the job.
melast 3y ago
There are zero signs, in fact we have proof they haven't lobbied anybody. https://michaelwest.com.au/documents-show-no-sign-albanese-government-lobbied-the-us-to-bring-julian-assange-home/ https://michaelwest.com.au/documents-show-no-sign-albanese-g...

neonate 4y ago

http://web.archive.org/web/20230319140022/https://harpers.org/archive/2023/03/alternative-facts-how-the-media-failed-julian-assange/ http://web.archive.org/web/20230319140022/https://harpers.or...

webdoodle 3y ago

Some of the independent journalists may have failed Assange, but the corporate mockingbird media intentionally maligned him, then later ignored him.