{"id":403267,"date":"2019-04-17T16:48:39","date_gmt":"2019-04-17T15:48:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-medias-role-in-persecuting-julian-assange\/"},"modified":"2019-04-17T16:48:39","modified_gmt":"2019-04-17T15:48:39","slug":"the-medias-role-in-persecuting-julian-assange","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-medias-role-in-persecuting-julian-assange\/","title":{"rendered":"The media\u2019s role in persecuting Julian Assange"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content\">\n<h3 class=\"nomargin\">\u00a0<\/h3>\n<h2>The media\u2019s role in persecuting Julian Assange<\/h2>\n<h5>\n<p>    By<br \/>\n    Andre Damon<br \/>\n    <br \/>17 April 2019<\/p>\n<\/h5>\n<p>Last week\u2019s arrest of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange has been met with universal approval from the US print and broadcast media.<\/p>\n<p>The <em>New York Times<\/em>, the <em>Washington Post<\/em>, and the <em>Wall Street Journal<\/em>, the three major US newspapers, have all enthusiastically endorsed Assange\u2019s arrest and extradition to the United States, for charges related to his publication of documents implicating the US government in war crimes and the mass murder of innocent people.<\/p>\n<p>These newspapers\u2019 enthusiastic approval for the effective rendition of a journalist, with the threat of torture, indefinite imprisonment and possible execution, sums up their attitude to the freedoms of speech and the press embodied in the First Amendment: they oppose it.<\/p>\n<p>They are not an independent media, but propaganda mills like those that exist in any dictatorship.<\/p>\n<p>Jeff Bezos\u2019 <em>Washington Post<\/em>was the least guarded, declaring Assange is \u201clong overdue for personal accountability,\u201d and reveling at his potential \u201cconversion into a cooperating witness.\u201d In reference to a country like the United States, which does not recognize basic international human rights agreements, extracting \u201ccooperation\u201d from a witness is a euphemism for torture.<\/p>\n<div class=\"imageFull\" style=\"width:480px; oveflow:hidden;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.wsws.org\/asset\/76116dd3-8997-48b3-9a72-80a0f39508cH\/image.png?rendition=image480\" srcset=\"\/asset\/76116dd3-8997-48b3-9a72-80a0f39508cH\/image.png?rendition=image960 2x\" width=\"480\" style=\"width:480px;\" \/><\/div>\n<p>But such cold, calculated editorials constitute, if this is possible, the less degraded portion of the media response to Assange\u2019s imprisonment, which has been treated by print newspapers, the broadcast news, and, perhaps worst of all, the late night talk shows, as the occasion to heap crude insults upon a persecuted journalist who cannot defend himself.<\/p>\n<p>In the \u201cnews\u201d section of the newspapers, the line between reporting, opinion, gossip, slander and libel was totally&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsws.org\/en\/articles\/2019\/04\/17\/medi-a17.html\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 The media\u2019s role in persecuting Julian Assange By Andre Damon 17 April 2019 Last week\u2019s arrest of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange has been met with universal approval from the US print and broadcast media. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, the three major US newspapers, have all enthusiastically [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2526,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-403267","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\/403267","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\/2526"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403267\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}