Published on
Monday, September 28, 2020
byCommon Dreams
As Major Outlets Ignore Assange Extradition Hearing, Ai Weiwei Demands
Freedom for WikiLeaks Founder
"He truly represents a core value of why we are free-because we have freedom
of the press," Weiwei said.
byLisa Newcomb, staff writer
Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei stages a silent protest in support of
Julian Assange outside of the Old Bailey court in central London on
September 28, 2020, where the extradition hearing against the WikiLeaks
founder has resumed. (Photo: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP via Getty Images)
Artist and Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei staged a silent protest Monday
outside the Old Bailey Court in London as critics pan the media for largely
ignoring the extradition hearing of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose
trial enters its fourth week of witness testimony.
"He truly represents a core value of why we are free-because we have freedom
of the press," Weiwei, a longtime supporter of Assange, said outside the
courtroom.
"[Assange] is prepared to fight, but this is not fair to him," he continued.
"Free him, let him be a free man."
Weiwei urged more civil action to bring attention to the trial, a call that
came as media watchdogs point out an alarming lack of coverage of the
hearing.
"The next time you see a mainstream media talking-head fawn over Bob
Woodward, just remember that if they had any backbone, any moral core, they
would be fawning over Julian Assange instead," Lee Camp, a progressive
political critic, wrote in Consortium News last week.
Camp pointed to the stark contrast in the deluge of mainstream media
coverage of veteran journalist Bob Woodward's recent book, and revelations
about President Donald Trump's lying to the American public about the
severity of the impending Covid-19 pandemic last winter and the relative
silence on Assange's trial.
Video journalist and commentator Matt Orfalea this month also drew
comparisons between Woodward and Assange's treatment by the United States
government and global media.
"Bob Woodward... has made his career publishing government secrets," Orfalea
said in a video posted earlier this month. "But today, he could go to jail
for publishing government secrets, because the Trump administration has
issued the first indictment in history charging a publisher for publishing
government secrets."
U.S. prosecutors have indicted the 49-year-old Assange on 17 espionage
charges and one charge of computer misuse over WikiLeaks' publication of
secret American military documents in 2010. The charges carry a maximum
sentence of 175 years in prison.
"Journalists do not need to care about Assange or like him," Jonathan Cook,
a U.K.-based reporter wrote as the trial began in early September. "They
have to speak out in protest because approval of his extradition will mark
the official death of journalism. It will mean that any journalist in the
world who unearths embarrassing truths about the U.S., who discovers its
darkest secrets, will need to keep quiet or risk being jailed for the rest
of their lives."
"That ought to terrify every journalist," Cook added. "But it has had no
such effect."
Explaining the vested interests of corporate media in siding with western
governments on which they report, Cook continued:
There were two goals the U.S. and U.K. set out to achieve through the
visible persecution, confinement, and torture of Assange.
First, he and WikiLeaks, the transparency organization he co-founded, needed
to be disabled. Engaging with WikiLeaks had to be made too risky to
contemplate for potential whistleblowers. That is why Chelsea Manning-the
U.S. soldier who passed on documents relating to U.S. war crimes in Iraq and
Afghanistan for which Assange now faces extradition-was similarly subjected
to harsh imprisonment. She later faced punitive daily fines while in jail to
pressure her into testifying against Assange.
The aim has been to discredit WikiLeaks and similar organizations and stop
them from publishing additional revelatory documents-of the kind that show
western governments are not the "good guys" managing world affairs for the
benefit of mankind, but are in fact highly militarized, global bullies
advancing the same ruthless colonial policies of war, destruction, and
pillage they always pursued.
And second, Assange had to be made to suffer horribly and in public-to be
made an example of-to deter other journalists from ever following in his
footsteps. He is the modern equivalent of a severed head on a pike displayed
at the city gates.
The very obvious fact-confirmed by the media coverage of his case-is that
this strategy, advanced chiefly by the U.S. and U.K. (with Sweden playing a
lesser role), has been wildly successful. Most corporate media journalists
are still enthusiastically colluding in the vilification of Assange-mainly
at this stage by ignoring his awful plight.
U.S. lawmakers have largely condemned Assange, despite what columnist Alan
MacLeod argued last week in a column for Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
(FAIR) is the "incendiary precedent" Assange's case would set for the media
in the U.S. in particular.
Both President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden
have condemned Assange. In 2010, Biden reportedly compared the WikiLeaks
founder to "a high-tech terrorist."
Progressive journalists have noted the media's missing coverage.
ShadowProof's Keven Gosztola-who has been providing comprehensive coverage
of the trial since its start-reported earlier this month that Daniel
Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers whistleblower, testified in Assange's defense
and poked holes in the U.S government's argument that in publishing the
secret documents on WikiLeaks, Assange endangered lives. Gosztola pointed
out that the WikiLeaks founder had asked the U.S. government for help
redacting names prior to releasing the information on his website.
He wrote:
Ellsberg noted Assange withheld 15,000 files from the release of the
Afghanistan War Logs. He also requested assistance from the State Department
and the Defense Department on redacting names, but they refused to help
WikiLeaks redact a single document, even though it is a standard
journalistic practice to consult officials to minimize harm.
"I have no doubt that Julian would have removed those names," Ellsberg
declared. Both the State and Defense Departments could have helped WikiLeaks
remove the names of individuals, who prosecutors insist were negatively
impacted.
Yet, rather than take steps to protect individuals, Ellsberg suggested these
government agencies chose to "preserve the possibility of charging Mr.
Assange with precisely the charges" he faces now.
Not a single person has been identified by the U.S. government when they
talk about deaths, physical harm, or incarceration that were linked to the
WikiLeaks publications.
As Assange's trial continues, advocates fear corporate media is failing not
only the public but the future of press freedom.
Cook noted that access journalism has weakened corporate media's willingness
to challenge sources they rely on regularly-including the U.S.
government-even if that means not quite holding power to account. He wrote:
Assange did not just expose the political class, he exposed the media class
too-for their feebleness, for their hypocrisy, for their dependence on the
centers of power, for their inability to criticize a corporate system in
which they were embedded.
Few of them can forgive Assange that crime. Which is why they will be there
cheering on his extradition, if only through their silence. A few liberal
writers will wait till it is too late for Assange, till he has been packaged
up for rendition, to voice half-hearted, mealy-mouthed or agonized columns
arguing that, unpleasant as Assange supposedly is, he did not deserve the
treatment the U.S. has in store for him.
But that will be far too little, far too late. Assange needed solidarity
from journalists and their media organizations long ago, as well as
full-throated denunciations of his oppressors. He and WikiLeaks were on the
front line of a war to remake journalism, to rebuild it as a true check on
the runaway power of our governments. Journalists had a chance to join him
in that struggle. Instead, they fled the battlefield, leaving him as a
sacrificial offering to their corporate masters.
On Monday Rebecca Vincent, director of International Campaigns for Reporters
Without Borders, confirming reporting from Gosztola, tweeted news from the
trial that medical experts are now concerned Assange could attempt to take
his own life while in detention.
"Even as their house is burning down, media are insisting it is just the
Northern Lights," MacLeod wrote.
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