The smearing of a revolution (John Pilger)
►http://www.newstatesman.com/global-issues/2011/10/pilger-assange-media-guardian
The Assange case demonstrates one thing – western claims to support democracy and the mainstream media’s defence of freedom of speech are entirely hypocritical. Source: John Pilger
New Statesman - The smearing of a revolution
►http://www.newstatesman.com/global-issues/2011/10/pilger-assange-media-guardian
It is difficult to find well-informed objectivity in the Guardian’s book on Assange, sold lucratively to Hollywood, in which Assange is described gratuitously as a “damaged personality” and “callous”. In the book, Leigh revealed the secret password Assange had given the paper. The disclosure of this code, designed to protect a digital file containing the US embassy cables, set off a chain of events that led to the release of all the files. The Guardian denies “utterly” that it was responsible for the release. What then was the point of publishing the password?
The Guardian’s Hackgate exposures were a tour de force; the Murdoch empire may disintegrate as a result. But, with or without Murdoch, a media consensus endures that echoes, from the BBC to the Sun, a corrupt, warmongering political establishment. Assange’s crime has been to threaten this consensus: those who fix the “parameters” of news and political ideas, and whose authority as media commissars is challenged by the revolution of the internet. The prize-winning former Guardian journalist Jonathan Cook has experience of both worlds.