Blog Post 9; The Press & War Part 2 - "Collateral Murder" & More

 The Press & War - "Collateral Murder" & More

    How and why is it that we still see the press following and supporting the government in times of war, and why are the journalists who spread the truth punished? 

Continuously throughout the history of our country we see the press tracking behind the government to deliver the news. Even today, with catastrophic events such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the media is blatantly lying about what's truly going on. The media portray the cause of the invasion to be a result of Putin's damaged mental state and use that as an excuse rather than an explanation. This vague coverage of this event leads to extensive speculation and further uncertainty regarding our government and war. 

    Why are the press and the media today assisting in spreading war propaganda and what is done to those who aim to spread the truth? 

    If we take a step back to the year 2006, we can look at Julian Assange. Assange was an Australian journalist that was the founder of WikiLeaks in 2006. His goal for Wikileaks was for it to be a site of  'scientific journalism' or in better terms, truthful journalism. Wikileaks also served as a platform that held classified or sensitive government documents for the public to read. 

    Assange's effort to do good quickly turned bad, as Wikileaks published a video titled "Collateral Murder" that contained unreleased footage of a United States Apache helicopter shooting and killing innocent men and children in Iraq. Wikileaks obtained this video from a second party affiliate, Chelsea/Bradley Manning, who was a United States Army intelligence agent. Manning leaked the video clip to Wikileaks from the first party, the American government.  

This video was released by Wikileaks on April 5th, 2010, by a third party.  

    After the publication of this video, Assange was being immediately tracked down (and still is) by the American government for publishing this video of their war crimes. However, Assange is not an American citizen, so the United States government came up with false accusations of rape to try and arrest him. These cases were dropped in 2017.

Assange was granted asylum in Ecuador's embassy in 2012 to keep the American government from arresting him. Assange stayed in Ecuador for 7 years until he was ousted in 2019 and sent to jail for 50 weeks. 

    While there are no legal biases to arrest Assange, he is currently being held in a London prison without due process. Mr. Julian Assange also suffers from some severe health issues, so at this point, it is assumed that the government is waiting for his death to completely drop his case. 

    What is seen here is a third party being punished for spreading the truth. The truth that the government doesn't want to be exposed. Notice how no United States based journalist, news source, or publisher spread this information. It was an Australian journalist whose life is being destroyed by a country he has no direct affiliation with all because he shed light on the severity of the government's war crime. Why haven't the pilot or the soldiers received consequences for their actions? Why is an innocent journalist, who did not even film or hack the United States government being punished so brutally?

    Maybe it's for reasons such as Assange that American journalists don't go digging for the truth, or if they do, they don't express it. But isn't this a problem? Journalists are so afraid of standing up for what's right and exposing the truth because of the repercussions they may receive from the government. 

That doesn't seem like democracy. 

That doesn't seem like a reflection of our First Amendment rights. 

That doesn't seem like the values journalism should be built on.