{"id":387683,"date":"2018-12-04T03:52:08","date_gmt":"2018-12-04T02:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-guardians-vilification-of-julian-assange-consortiumnews\/"},"modified":"2018-12-04T03:52:08","modified_gmt":"2018-12-04T02:52:08","slug":"the-guardians-vilification-of-julian-assange-consortiumnews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-guardians-vilification-of-julian-assange-consortiumnews\/","title":{"rendered":"The Guardian\u2019s Vilification of Julian Assange \u2013 Consortiumnews"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The Guardian<\/em><\/span> did not make a mistake in vilifying Assange without a shred of evidence. It did what it is designed to do, says Jonathan Cook.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>
<\/span><\/p>\n

By Jonathan Cook<\/strong>
Johanthan-Cook.net<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Reporter Luke Harding\u2019s latest article,\u00a0<\/span><\/span>claiming<\/u><\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0that Donald Trump\u2019s disgraced former campaign manager Paul Manafort secretly visited Assange in Ecuador\u2019s embassy in London on three occasions, is so full of holes that even hardened opponents of Assange in the corporate media are struggling\u00a0to stand by it.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Faced with the backlash,\u00a0The Guardian<\/em>\u00a0quickly \u2013 and very quietly \u2013\u00a0<\/span><\/span>rowed back<\/u><\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0its initial certainty that its story was based on verified facts. Instead, it amended the text, without acknowledging it had done so, to attribute the claims to unnamed, and uncheckable, \u201csources\u201d.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The propaganda function of the piece is patent. It is intended to provide evidence for long-standing allegations that Assange conspired with Trump, and Trump\u2019s supposed backers in the Kremlin, to damage Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential race.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The Guardian<\/em>\u2019s latest story provides a supposedly stronger foundation for an existing narrative: that Assange and Wikileaks knowingly published emails hacked by Russia from the Democratic party\u2019s servers. In truth, there is\u00a0<\/span><\/span>no public evidence<\/u><\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0that the emails were hacked, or that Russia was involved. Central actors have suggested instead that the emails were leaked from within the Democratic party.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Nonetheless, this unverified allegation has been aggressively exploited by the Democratic leadership because it shifts attention away both from its failure to mount an effective electoral challenge to Trump and from the damaging contents of the emails. These show that party bureaucrats sought to\u00a0<\/span><\/span>rig the<\/span> primaries<\/span><\/u><\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0to make sure Clinton\u2019s challenger for the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders, lost.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

To underscore the intended effect of the Guardian\u2019s new claims, Harding even throws in a casual and unsubstantiated reference to \u201cRussians\u201d…<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Guardian did not make a mistake in vilifying Assange without a shred of evidence. It did what it is designed to do, says Jonathan Cook.\u00a0 By Jonathan CookJohanthan-Cook.net It is welcome that finally there has been a little pushback, including from leading journalists, to\u00a0The Guardian\u2019s long-running vilification of Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2524,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-387683","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2524"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387683\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}