NZ Journalists should be ashamed at the way they betrayed Julian Assange!
There are notable exceptions: Selwyn Manning and Dr Paul Buchanan never stopped their journalism on him but much of the mainstream media in NZ seemed allergic to the Assange case once he was falsely accused of rape.
The accusation was manufactured as MeToo was building and it effectively smeared Assange so that he became invisible.
He exposed 15 000 war crimes and personally redacted 10 000 names to protect those sources.
He was locked up for 5 years in solitary confinement. For so many NZ Journalists to ignore the impact he has had to expose as many war crimes as he did is made even more gross by the fact he was an Australian!
So much for the ANZAC spirit.
I want to acknowledge the incredible activism of Alan Preston and Matt Ó Branáin for fighting for Assange as tirelessly as they did, a salute to Golriz and the Green Party as well, also the independent bloggers from No Right Turn to Gordon Campbell for keeping the issue alive in the NZ media landscape.
As NZ journalists ponder why their craft is so ill thought of, a true champion of speaking truth to power goes home unhelped by the NZ Journalist community.
NZHerald’s lack of coverage meant on 26Jun24 it needed to explain to its readership “Who is Julian Assange”
“Who is Julian Assange and why is the embattled WikiLeaks founder now on the verge of freedom?” https://t.ly/9YLh8
Not one editorial calling for Assanges freedom an a Free Press, Free Journalism, Freedom to Publish, Free Speech or for Aus and NZ Soverignity and freedom from the overextension of US Law
I’m with you on this Martyn.
And not one editorial cartoon in any of our newspapers!
The five eyes group would not allow it, anybody who dared to speak the truth to power would be utterly squashed & drummed out…see what happened to the RNZ journo who had the temerity to add a bit of context to the lies we are being feed by (our) western media.
Ukraine/Gaza it’s all the same, carefully manufactured news for the sheeple to swallow, thanks to the internet & unfortunately for them we can see a lot of it in real time so can make up our own minds as to what is really going on!
There’s no ‘our’ about the regime media organs- they’re entirely owned and operated by the enemy.
Impressive, isn’t it.
Kia ora. I’ve been quite involved with the case of Julian Assange since setting up the New Zealanders For Julian Assange website and facebook groups back in early 2021 – and have been following the case since Wikileaks first started.
During this time we became aware that our media was not doing any ( of its own ) reporting on the case which lead to my making an official complaint to Radio New Zealand in which I opened by asking that they create an additional category for ‘omission’ – which is the main means by which I have learned that our media controls the narrative. They denied this of course so I forwarded my complaint with their response to the Office of The Ombudsman who cunningly deflected it telling me that because I was not a journalist I could have no greater interest than the ordinary person – intimating that the complaint could only be pursued by those who had something to lose – i.e. journalistic freedom.
So I set to and wrote personally addressed e-mails to 550 journalists working in New Zealand’s media organisations and to 220 academics teaching media and political studies in our tertiary educational centres and to all 120 Members of Parliament asking that they pay some attention to the case of Julian Assange and to the implications it had on the willingness of our journalists to hold power to account.
Martyn Bradbury and Nicky Hager were the only reponses I ever received.
To their credit Radio New Zealand journalists have ( since my complaint ) conducted some very good long form interviews – although long periods ( especially if you’re the one waiting it out in solitary confinement ) passed between them. We’ve archived links to the audio for these interviews here.
I have since repeated these hugely time-consuming email campaigns to encourage and facilitate support through sending links to resources and pro-forma letters on our website ( which had its URL taken down by our provider ) and to our Facebook Group – which we can only conclude has been subject to shadow-banning through their algorithm as despite our having 578 members our posts often attract either zero or close to zero reach or interactions.
Ostensibly we New Zealanders live in a democracy but our media professionals have mysteriously been showing very little interest in what the European Federation of Journalists is calling ‘an extremely dangerous precedent’ which is already having a chilling effect on journalists’ willingness to investigate stories that truly hold power to account.Consequently there has been very little awareness about this case among the New Zealand public and a commensurate lack of concern that might otherwise have translated (given that we are a functioning, responsive democracy ) into diplomatic pressure that could have been exerted through our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade , to get Julian Assange released, in the first instance, and ultimately, to start investigations into the evidence of violations of the Geneva Convention by U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan.
( P.S. for the full version of this message – with links embedded ) head over to https://sites.google.com/view/newzealandersforjulianassange/home where you’ll a link ‘20240703 to The Daily Blog’ at the bottom of the page. )
“Assange’s persecution has been a foul campaign of lies and defamation.”…
…On this topic the then two top political Blogs in AoNz covered themselves in Shit as much ( and more) than our journalists ,,,
‘The Standard and Kiwiblog both drenched themselves in the rancid dirty shit that they were spreading and smearing Assange with,,, and they also were directing it against those who spoke out against the abuse of power and character assassination leveled at him.
I had to do a quick search to confirm that KiwiBlogs David Farrar was playing (international) ‘Dirty politics’ and repeating the lies/smears against Assange with the authority and ease of a person who has low morals and a disdain for either the truth or Justice ,,,, his tribal ( right wing) commentators sung Farrars tune, and down-voted posts which contained the truth or facts which countered their ugly ‘rape opportunist’ positions and ‘lynch the creep ‘postings ….. So no surprises from the ‘truth is my enemy’ ‘ Dirty David and the right wing ‘mischief’ he liked to stir up and throw around.
,,, But ‘The Standard’ was even Worse …. Lyn Prentance who promotes his programming and IT skills likes to do a ‘ The Standard is a machine’ (that he built) routine/spiel … Assange showed the machine Lyn built can operate as a dirty unpleasant shit pump and sewage sprayer ,,,, especially when Lyn or the sites bad authors are driving/moderating it….
‘rape opportunists’ and other bent cocks that infest the standard denounced anyone speaking out against the international dirty politics and character assassination brought to bear against Assange as being “rape apologists”, sexist pigs and other unfounded insults….
The level of personal attacks and nasty shit was (much) worse at the standard than KiwiBlog,,, where it was just another day at Farrars right wing sewer…..
To this day both off these sites are hosting counterfactual defamatory lies, smears and other character assignation against Assange ,,,
Both partners and players in a world wide campaign to bury truthful information, or those who may tell it, under a mountain of sleaze and lies…..
As a result of this wall to wall/Left to Right dirty politics disinformation campaign many people who have never met Julian Assange will say that they do not like Julian ‘as a person’ ….
Nicky Hager tells a ( suppressed ) different story … https://youtu.be/6hoRa9QP8CA?t=1268
Comments are closed.