Spoils of War

Share this post

How the Press Abandoned One of Their Own

spoilsofwar.substack.com

How the Press Abandoned One of Their Own

How Julian Assange has been left to his fate.

Andrew Cockburn
Feb 22
19
17
Share this post

How the Press Abandoned One of Their Own

spoilsofwar.substack.com

My piece in Harper’s Magazine, just published, on the real facts of the Assange story, studiously ignored by his fellow journalists.

Julian Assange, 2015 © Andy Gotts/Camera Press/Redux 

[Letter from Washington]

Alternative Facts

by Andrew Cockburn

How the media failed Julian Assange

Every year on the first of December, the Committee to Protect Journalists publishes its global prison census, documenting the number of journalists behind bars around the world. The 2022 edition set a grim record: 363 jailed journalists. Scanning the list—organized alphabetically by first name—and scrolling down to the J’s, we see that Juan Lorenzo Holmann Chamorro, publisher of the Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa, has been locked up since 2021 on charges of money laundering, part of the Ortega dictatorship’s crackdown on independent media. Next is Juret Haji, the director of the Xinjiang Daily, detained since 2018 after a colleague was accused of being “two-faced,” a common Chinese government accusation. Julian Assange would fit neatly between these two names, but he fails to appear, as has been the case since the founder of WikiLeaks was dragged from London’s Ecuadorian Embassy in 2019 and locked in solitary confinement at Belmarsh Prison, dubbed “Britain’s Guantánamo.”

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

Share

17
Share this post

How the Press Abandoned One of Their Own

spoilsofwar.substack.com
17 Comments
yrs gudbye u canot still em VZ
Writes Just Tell the Words — just gime…
Feb 24

This is such excellent reporting. The sources and the sequencing in time that locks out (by pure virtue of sourced facts) any possibility of Assange treated fairly consistently, and by whom; and is then air-right with respect to those who have treated him fairly consistently, even after reconsideration, some contradicting themselves, and not budging, some caving in and returning to his defence. The people involved in all capacities is just air tight and irrefutable. It shows some behaving ethically and others behaving as ugly paradoxes. Yet he’s still being treated extra-judicially, extra-ethically. It’s guerrilla warfare inside the State services and the press services and would transpose to massacre if played out on the ground. Thank you @Andrew. We now know.

Expand full comment
Reply
billyquaide
Feb 23

Because the CIA and the security state control mass media along with social media and all journalists and editors are actually careerists and not journalists.

No need to go to Harper's now.

You're welcome.

Expand full comment
Reply
15 more comments…
TopNewCommunity

No posts

Ready for more?

© 2023 Andrew Cockburn
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start WritingGet the app
Substack is the home for great writing