AJE Fails Re: Assange Speech

What a terrible episode of Inside Story. From the outset, the reporting is fairly shallow (ok as a newsbrief, not ok for a feature introduction). Douglas Murry was full of childish polemics and no real information or insight. Timmons was not the sharpest advocate for Assange's side, nor did he possess appropriate credentials or character to consider him a serious voice here. Khawar Qureshi was the only valuable guest, though his bias showed through in his focus and interpretation of events very sharply.



AJE: What next for Julian Assange?

Jane Dutton did nothing to balance this obviously slanted guestlist. Worse than that, she actively added to the obfuscation and the distance this program had from the real world - nothing is acknowledged about the Ecuadorean media "under attack" actively calling for the overthrow of the government - something intolerable in Trilateral (Western-oriented) nations as "incitement to violence." Nothing is acknowledged about the grasping character of the rendition request, wherein Sweden had to transfer the case from prosecutor to prosecutor until they could find one which would abuse their legal system. Nothing is acknowledged about the accountability of government and how much information that has come out from these documents that helpfully inform our democratic process. That Daniel Ellsberg, the person who released the Pentagon Papers, has sided with Assange is not acknowledged, though it changes the narrative immensely. Bradley Manning (the real victim here, who has been subject to torture) is facing far stiffer penalties than Ellsberg ever did.

This episode played into all the worse processes that organizations like Wikileaks are against. I don't know to what extent Dutton controlled this program besides her language on this segment, but just about everyone involved in this episode needs to really reconsider what on earth they were trying to accomplish.