When WikiLeaks first began publishing documents detailing war crimes committed by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, mainstream media outlets were quick to file their reports, scooping up every bit of new information. That was the case until the whistleblowing site shared unflattering material on then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016.
“They [mainstream media] have just been complicit in covering up the torture of WikiLeaks founder] Julian Assange inside the [Ecuadorian] embassy; they are directly responsible for the position he’s in right now,” Suzie Dawson, president of New Zealand’s Internet Party, told Radio Sputnik on Thursday.
“They’re directly responsible for the lack of mass on-the-ground action by millions worldwide because those millions have been suppressed by being fed a constant stream of disinformation, and all we’re going to keep seeing from these media outlets is more and more disinformation.”
“I’m completely disgusted by them, and I think they’re shooting themselves in the foot… I think the media have blood on their hands,” she stressed.
The question now is, how did Assange, a man who’s life’s work was welcomed with open arms by various media organization, fall so dramatically from their good graces? As Sputnik’s Brian Becker notes, it all took a massive turn in 2016, when WikiLeaks published “embarrassing documents showing government, political and corporate misconduct during the final years of the Obama administration.
