In the endless brain fart cyclone
that is the Trump era, CNN White House Correspondent Jim Acosta has
made a name for himself posing as a martyr of the free press. While US
mass media have made a theatrical WWE performance of Trump’s occasional mean
words toward Acosta under the banner of defending press freedoms, it has been
pathetically sympathetic to this administration’s attempt to actually prosecute
an actual journalist, Julian Assange, under the Espionage Act.
It is about time, then, that
someone highlighted the irony and hypocrisy of this ridiculous melodrama by
confronting Acosta on these contradictions directly. Thanks
to independent video journalist Matt Orfalea, we now have footage of one
such necessary confrontation taking place.
At a publicity interview for
Acosta’s new book (titled “The Enemy of the People: A Dangerous Time to Tell
the Truth in America” in the author’s trademark self-righteous and histrionic
fashion), Orfalea asked
Acosta what he thought about the Trump administration’s charging
Assange under the Espionage Act.
Acosta word-saladed for a
while, mentioned apropos of nothing that Orfalea is probably a WikiLeaks
supporter, and then, as you could probably predict, began babbling about
Russia.
“My understanding about the
Julian Assange situation is that you know he is being charged not just for
trying to speak truth to power and trying to reveal things,” Acosta said. “He’s
in trouble for other things. And you know what we’ve seen during the 2016
campaign where there were contacts between WikiLeaks and Russian operatives.
That I think takes Wikileaks and Julian Assange into sort of a different
category than is a straight news organization — straight publisher of news
around the world.”
As you probably already know,
and as Jim Acosta most certainly knows, Julian Assange is not charged with
anything related to the entirely
unproven Russia allegations about his publications in 2016. The
mountain of charges which have been heaped against him, most of which involve
the Espionage Act and all of which seek to criminalize standard
journalistic practices, all pertain to his 2010 publications of the Chelsea
Manning leaks. Nothing whatsoever to do with Russia or 2016.
“I do understand what Julian
Assange and WikiLeaks — what the spirit of what they’re trying to do — but I
can’t sit here and endorse everything that they’ve done and the tactics that
they used to go about presenting the information that they gather to the
world,” Acosta concluded after a vapid gibberish fountain which contained
nothing of substance apart from a tacit endorsement of the Trump
administration’s prosecution of a journalist under the Espionage Act.
Acosta’s non-answer was a power-serving,
question-avoiding obfuscation that would make Donald Trump blush, and his false
claim that Assange’s imprisonment and pending extradition has anything
whatsoever to do with Russia constitutes a defense of Assange’s treatment at
the hands of the Trump administration. In a single four-minute interaction,
Acosta (A) invalidated his posture as a defender of the free press, (B)
invalidated his posture as oppositional toward Trump, and (C) illustrated
everything that is unwholesome about western mass media.
In the Trump era, @Acosta has made huge sums by reinventing
himself as an anti-Trump maverick reporter. But when challenged by @0rf, he refused to condemn the Trump
administration’s most flagrant attack of press freedom. A pathetic, obsequious
display. https://youtu.be/iyb7fUrjajk
“[Assange] is not currently
charged with anything related to the 2016 election, but that did not stop Acosta
from trying to make a case for why he wants to see him punished for the 2010
release as payback for the completely unrelated publication of the Democratic
National Committee emails,” journalist Cassandra Fairbanks wrote of
the exchange.
“In the Trump era,
Acosta has made huge sums by reinventing himself as an anti-Trump maverick
reporter,” tweeted journalist
Dan Cohen regarding the interaction. “But when challenged by [Orfalea], he
refused to condemn the Trump administration’s most flagrant attack of press
freedom. A pathetic, obsequious display.”
Indeed, the precedent which
would be set by the US government prosecuting a foreign journalist for
publishing newsworthy facts about US war crimes is the single greatest threat
to press freedoms in modern times, bar none. But the man whom the ruling
establishment has anointed as Mister Press Freedom Himself has nothing but
sympathetic things to say about it.
These comments from one of
CNN’s most prominent figures come to light days after CNN published an astonishingly
deceitful smear piece on Assange packed
to the gills with demonstrable lies. This is the same CNN that told
its viewers that it’s against the law to read WikiLeaks, with Democratic
Party prince Chris Cuomo lying “Remember,
it’s illegal to possess these stolen documents; it’s different for the media,
so everything you learn about this you’re learning from us.” The same CNN that
falsely reported that Assange is a pedophile not once, but twice. The
same CNN that has been
caught blatantly lying in its Russiagate coverage, which has had
to fire journalists for misreporting Russiagate in a media environment
where that almost never happens with Russia stories, which has deleted
evidence of its journalistic malpractice regarding Russiagate from the
internet without retraction or apology.
Jim Acosta does not support
press freedom, Jim Acosta supports power. Julian Assange supports press
freedom, and he’s being ferociously persecuted for it. With the help of
sycophantic bootlickers like Jim Acosta.
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment