The Endgame: Assange running low on support - and options
If Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa grants Julian Assange his asylum plea, the Wikileaks founder may escape prosecution in the United States indefinitely. But by holing up in Ecuadors embassy in the United Kingdom, Assange has already sacrificed the one thing thats made him a household name his credibility
By KEVIN BLOOM
... I have decided to hold out an olive-branch to our overworked detractors, Assange stated in the release, by writing higher quality smears for them ...
thats exactly what the mainstream Western media said about Assange and Wikileaks in the days following the shows debut, although in slightly less blatant terms. While Assange, as he did in the press release, would no doubt have boiled the comparatively restrained language down to a journalistic lack of imagination, he was still dead-on: the big media organisations called him out for being a hypocrite.
Nevertheless, given whats happened in the last week, the question must once more be askedif Assange is able to confidently and correctly predict a media backlash that labels him one thing or another, does this mean he isnt what the label says he is? ...
Yet its undeniable by now that Assange is scraping the bottom of the sympathy barrel. The worlds most powerful English-medium newspaper brands, former supporters of his including the New York Times and the Guardian, have turned on him for good reasonthe values that he once held dear, the principles of openness and transparency that he once espoused, have been rendered empty by his latest choice of ally.
http://dailymaverick.co.za/article/2012-06-25-the-endgame-assange-running-low-on-support-and-options
Daniellesbian
(7 posts)"But by holing up in Ecuadors embassy in the United Kingdom, Assange has already sacrificed the one thing thats made him a household name his credibility"
No, this statement is just another reflection of recent distortions by some news commentators to grossly exaggerate and caricature Correa and Ecuador's flaws since the day Assange turned up at their embassy. Not that they don't have real problems, but Assange's take on it is certainly more credible than the recent meme of painting a multi-party democracy with a popular, democratically-elected president as some kind of police-state. The Washington Post Editorial Board went so far as to completely fabricate the claim that Correa "professes" to "despise" the United States, obviously to isolate him from the ranks of "respectable" world leaders. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/asylum-for-julian-assange/2012/06/20/gJQAZpuJrV_story.html He has never said anything of the kind, and in fact, is a moderate leftist with a soft spot for Barack Obama (an attitude I find to be overly generous). Pay a little closer attention when all the classic signs of jingoistic and manipulative yellow journalism are so clearly evident.
"Well, (Ecuador's) free speech issues are certainly no worse than ones in the UK. I mean, this is the country with hundreds of gag orders, so let's keep things in perspective. I mean, I would enjoy campaigning for the rights of journalists in Ecuador." ~Julian Assange, http://wlcentral.org/node/2676
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)efforts to hide the truth.
That's what journalists are supposed to do.
The reaction of our government: Shoot the messenger.
There is nothing wrong with publishing the truth if someone happens to reveal it to you, but there is something very wrong with punishing the person who does the publishing.
EFerrari
(163,986 posts)(And thanks, struggle4progress, for keeping us up to date with it.)
You can count on one hand the media figures that are pushing back on it.