WSWS: NY Times article ‘drips with malice’
at Assange disclosure of damning documents
The response of the New York Times to WikiLeaks’ posting of classified American military documents exposing US war crimes in Iraq is to downplay the atrocities and portray WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as the criminal party.
The newspaper of record of the American liberal establishment is not outraged by further proof of murder and torture on a mass scale, implicating the highest officials in both the Bush and Obama administrations, but instead reserves its fury for those courageous individuals who have dared to breach the government-media wall of silence and give the public access to some portion of the horrific truth about the US war in Iraq.
The Times assigned the job of character assassination to an old hand at penning cover-ups and apologetics for US imperialist operations, John F. Burns. The British-born journalist has headed Times bureaus in such strategic capitals as Moscow and Beijing. As head of the Times’ Baghdad bureau in the lead-up to the US invasion of Iraq, Burns played a major role in the newspaper’s promotion of US government lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
Burns has been London bureau chief since mid-2007. On Sunday, the Times published a front-page piece over the joint byline of John F. Burns and Ravi Somaiya and bearing the disparaging headline: “WikiLeaks Chief on Run, Trailed by His Notoriety.” The article purports to be based on an interview with Assange conducted in London on October 17. By that time, the Times had had access for close to two weeks to the nearly 400,000 military logs released to the public on Friday by WikiLeaks.
The article drips with malice. One of its aims—to depict Assange as a sinister figure, suffering from delusions of grandeur and paranoia—is indicated by the opening sentence: “Julian Assange moves like a hunted man.”
posted by Tom Nadeau at 3:06 AM
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