Bias in Assange News Coverage

How many news orgs, in their coverage of the rape allegations against Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange, mention the whole story, i.e that both the Prosecution and the Defense claims that the sex was consensual but then “condom mishaps” occurred (as explained in this Wired article)? I think this little fact is very important to how people read the story – but how many news orgs are bothering to include it? And how many reference the fact that Assange’s lawyers they have been asking for, but haven’t received, details of the claims?

Let’s see.

News.com.au – no mention.

Press TV – no mention.

NY Daily News – condom mishap mentioned.

CNN – no mention.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation – no mention.

The Telegraph – no mention.

LA Times – no mention.

Bloomberg – no mention.

Wall Street Journal – no mention.

Sydney Morning Herald – no mention.

Julian Assange at TED July 2010

Australia’s most impressive media entrepreneur, Julian Assange, explains how Wikileaks works and provides some insight into recent events, in this recent interview with Wired’s Chris Anderson at TED.

http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf

Assange is trying to use the internet to change the world. He is what Peter Ellyard would call a “Future Maker”. I’m constantly motived and inspired by Julian’s quietly bold approach to tackle world governments and corporations. He’s spot on in this interview when he says a good approach to figuring out what the most important news is, is to discover what corporations and governments are spending a lot of effort and money to keep secret.

Recently I’ve been reading ridiculous suggestions that Wikileaks is a “honey trap” for whistleblowers. The idea seems to be that Wikileaks gets potential whistleblowers to come forward, and then they are arrested, Manning’s recent arrest is taken as being a sign that something is rotten in Denmark. The only problem with this scenario is that stuff is being leaked. It would be seem a bit of a stretch to think the establishment are allowing their dirty laundry to get exposed in an effort to create a temptation for potential whistleblowers to come forwards. As Julian says at the beginning of the video, Wikileaks has released more leaks in the last couple of years than the rest of the world media COMBINED.

John Pilger on “The News” and the US Agenda

Watch this video from Australian journalist John Pilger if you’re at all interested in where our modern “news” organisations came from, why they can’t be trusted, and how they support the agenda of the elite, both Republican and Democrat, Liberal and Labor. This is one of the most inspiring speeches I have heard in a long, long time.

clipped from http://www.wikileaks.org/

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Okay, This Has Gone Far Enough

The Australian Government is officially fascist. They have officially stepped way, WAY over the line. There is no way they can justify blacklisting the Wikileaks site on the basis of “protecting the children from pornographers”. This is straight-up abuse of power, as Asher Moses points out in his article on the SMH:

Last week, Reporters Without Borders, in its regular report on enemies of internet freedom, placed Australia on its “watch list” of countries imposing anti-democratic internet restrictions that could open the way for abuses of power and control of information.

I wonder if ACMA considers it illegal to post TinyURLs to banned sites?

I wonder if its illegal to stick up posters on walls with the urls of banned sites?

I wonder if its illegal to stand in the street and speak the name of a banned url out loud?

I wonder if it’s illegal to even think the url of a banned site?

Read more below:

clipped from www.smh.com.au

The Australian communications regulator says it will fine people
who hyperlink to sites on its blacklist, which has been further
expanded to include several pages on the anonymous whistleblower
site Wikileaks.

Wikileaks was added to the blacklist for publishing a leaked
document containing Denmark’s list of banned websites.

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