Help Us Cover the Julian Assange Story – Consortium News

With corporate TV and press abandoning the imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher, Consortium News has been in the forefront among alternative media in chronicling his plight. But we cant do it without you.

Assange outside UK Supreme Court in 2011. (Flickr)

Except for a brief moment after his dramatic arrest, the mainstream media has abandoned Julian Assange. They do this at their own peril.

Thats because the arrest and espionage indictment of Assange for practicing journalism is a danger to all journalists everywhere.

Consortium News started covering the Assange case on Dec. 16, 2010 with an article by founding editor Robert Parry, one of the leading investigative reporters of his generation. Bob argued that Assange was practicing journalism in the exact way that he did. He wrote:

the process for reporters obtaining classified information about crimes of state most often involves a journalist persuading some government official to break the law either by turning over classified documents or at least by talking about the secret information. There is almost always some level of conspiracy between reporter and source.

Though some elements of this suspected Assange-Manning collaboration may be technically unique because of the Internets role and that may be a relief to more traditional news organizations like the Times which has published some of the WikiLeaks documents the underlying reality is that what WikiLeaks has done is essentially the same wine of investigative journalism in a new bottle of the Internet.

By shunning WikiLeaks as some deviant journalistic hybrid, mainstream U.S. news outlets may breathe easier now but may find themselves caught up in a new legal precedent that could be applied to them later.

Since that first article, Consortium News has published more than 200 articles and 57 videos on Assange and WikiLeaks, 205 of the articles and all of the videos coming in the past two years alone. Thats because this website has recognized the historic importance of the case against Assange, which has justly been compared to the trials of John Peter Zenger and Alfred Dreyfus.

Our Assange coverage has not just scratched the surface, but has dug deeply into the meaning of the case, legally, politically and historically. We are committed to continuing this in-depth coverage of Assanges ongoing extradition ordeal at the hands of the Trump administration.

But we cant do it alone. You have an immense role to play as readers and viewers, our only source of support. Please join our team, or reaffirm your commitment to it, with a generous donation today to our 25th Anniversary Spring Fund Drive.

Here (in reverse chronological order) is the full archive of CNs stories on WikiLeaks and Assange. There are more than 200 articles on Assange in the past two years. CN Live! has produced 57 videos on the WikiLeaks publisher.

PleaseDonate Today

More:
Help Us Cover the Julian Assange Story - Consortium News