From ... in Social issues — Jul 16, 2023

The state capture of UK corporate media and how journalists that abandoned Julian Assange have “slit their own throats”

The failure by journalists to mount a campaign to free Julian Assange, or expose the vicious smear campaign against him, is one more catastrophic and self-defeating blunder by the news media.

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The following are excerpts from the article ‘Journalists Abandoned Julian Assange and Slit Their Own Throats’ written by Chris Hedges. Read the full article HERE.

The persecution of Julian Assange, along with the climate of fear, wholesale government surveillance and use of the Espionage Act to prosecute whistle-blowers, has emasculated investigative journalism. The press has not only failed to mount a sustained campaign to support Julian, whose extradition appears imminent, but no longer attempts to shine a light into the inner workings of power. This failure is not only inexcusable, but ominous.

The US government, especially the military and agencies such as the CIA, the FBI, the NSA and Homeland Security, have no intention of stopping with Julian, who faces 170 years in prison if found guilty of violating 17 counts of the Espionage Act. They are cementing into place mechanisms of draconian state censorship, some features of which were exposed by Matt Taibbi in the Twitter Files, to construct a dystopian corporate totalitarianism.

Julian has not been sentenced in this case for a crime. He is charged under the Espionage Act, although he is not a US citizen and WikiLeaks is not a US-based publication. The UK courts, which have engaged in what can only be described as a show trial, appear ready to turn him over to the US once his final appeal, as we expect, is rejected. This could happen in a matter of days or weeks.

On 6 July at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Stella Assange, an attorney who is married to Julian, Matt Kennard, co-founder and chief investigator of Declassified UK, and Chris Hedges examined the collapse of the press, especially with regard to Julian’s case. You can watch their discussion below.

When Julian and WikiLeaks released the secret diplomatic cables and Iraq War logs, which exposed numerous US war crimes, including torture and the murder of civilians, corruption, diplomatic scandals, lies and spying by the US government, the commercial media had no choice but to report the information. Julian and WikiLeaks shamed them into doing their job. But, even as they worked with Julian, organisations such as The New York Times and The Guardian were determined to destroy him. He threatened their journalistic model and exposed their accommodation with the centres of power.

“They hated him,” Matt said of the corporate media reporters and editors. “They went to war with him immediately after those releases. I was working for The Financial Times in Washington in late 2010 when those releases happened. The reaction of the office at The Financial Times was one of the major reasons I got disillusioned with the mainstream media.”

The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, El Pais and Der Spiegel, all of which published WikiLeaks documents provided by Julian, published a joint open letter on 28 November 2022 calling on the US government “to end its prosecution of Julian Assange for publishing secrets.” But the demonisation of Julian, which these publications helped to foster, had already been accomplished.

Matt went on the describe the corporate media as “a very insidious system.”

“There has been something really sinister that has happened in the last twenty years, particularly at The Guardian,” he said. “The Guardian is just state-affiliated media.”

[Little known and rarely discussed by the media establishment, Britain has for decades maintained the highly secretive Defence and Security Media Advisory (“DSMA”) Committee, which imposes a very British form of censorship on the press. It decides which subjects and events can be reported on, and how, in a chivalrous yet fundamentally dishonest manner.]

[According to Declassified UK, representatives from the broadcasters ITV, BBC, and Sky News are part of the committee. “The managing editor of The Times and Sunday Times and the deputy editor of The Telegraph” are present as well.]

[Often the Committee issues D-notices as an official request to journalists not to publish or broadcast particular information on subjects related to national security, or ask for the removal of certain details from reporting on supposedly sensitive topics. Read more HERE.]

The D-notice committee, Matt explained, is composed of journalists and state security officials in the UK who meet every six months. They discuss what journalists can and can’t publish. The committee sends out regular advisories.

The Guardian ignored advisories not to publish the revelations of illegal mass surveillance released by Edward Snowden. Finally, under intense pressure, including threats by the government to shut the paper down, The Guardian agreed to permit two Government Communication Headquarters (“GCHQ”) officials to oversee the destruction of the hard drives and memory devices that contained material provided by Snowden. The GCHQ officials on 20 July 2013 filmed three Guardian editors as they destroyed laptops with angle grinders and drills.

The deputy editor of The Guardian, Paul Johnson – who was in the basement during the destruction of the laptops – was appointed to the D-notice committee. He served at the D-notice committee for four years. In his last committee meeting, Johnson was thanked for “re-establishing links” between the committee and The Guardian.

Featured image: Julian Assange has been under arrest since 2010 for his role in the “cablegate” leak that exposed human rights abuses by the US government (right). Source: London exhibition supporting Wikileaks whistleblower Julian Assange

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