8 Smears and Misconceptions About WikiLeaks Spread By the Media

8 Smears and Misconceptions About WikiLeaks Spread By the Media

By Julianne Escobedo Shepherd and Tana Ganeva, AlterNet
Posted on December 31, 2010, Printed on December 31, 2010
Crossposted with http://www.alternet.org/story/149369/ [print_link]

Glenn Greenwald has argued, mainstream news outlets are parroting smears and falsehoods about the whistleblower site and its founder Julian Assange, helping to perpetuate a number of “zombie lies” — misconceptions that refuse to die no matter how much they conflict with known reality, basic logic and well-publicized information.

Here are the bogus narratives that keep appearing in newspapers and on the airwaves.

officials admitted there were no documented instances of people being killed because of information exposed by WikiLeaks’ previous document releases (and unlike the diplomatic cables, the Afghanistan files were unredacted).

and Le Monde, and used most of the redactions employed by those papers to protect the identities of people whose lives could be endangered by exposure. The AP detailed this process in a December 3 article, but this did not stop officials and pundits from howling that WikiLeaks “indiscriminately” dumped all the cables online. Much of the media mindlessly repeated the claim.

Greenwald and others have battled to kill the myth that the whistleblower site threw up all the cables without taking any precautions to protect people, but it keeps coming up. Just this week NPR issued an apology for all the times contributors and guests have implied or outright voiced the falsehood that WikiLeaks blindly posted all the cables at once.

broken any laws. Assange is not a U.S. citizen, he does not work for the U.S. government, and the documents WikiLeaks posted were procured by someone else. As Greenwald has repeatedly pointed out, it’s not against the law to publish classified U.S. government information. If it were, hundreds of journalists would be in prison right now.

CNN debate between Bush Homeland Security adviser Fran Townsend and Glenn Greenwald hosted by Jessica Yellin, Greenwald had to repeatedly bat away the assertion that Assange has “profited” from “criminal” acts.

The Walkley Foundation, an institution of journalism in Assange’s home of Australia, put it more succinctly in its own letter of support for WikiLeaks: “To aggressively attempt to shut WikiLeaks down, to threaten to prosecute those who publish official leaks, and to pressure companies to cease doing commercial business with WikiLeaks, is a serious threat to democracy, which relies on a free and fearless press.”

Wired are true, he unleashed the cables out of an overwhelming sense of justice, saying, “I want people to see the truth regardless of who they are because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.”

in calling Assange a “terrorist.”

Here are just a few of the stories revealed by the documents:

The promise that the next release will target a U.S. bank, and that it will have an effect similar to the Enron disclosures, according to Assange, certainly portends that the trove of information we haven’t yet seen could be explosive. And that is incredibly valuable to the American public.

Julianne Escobedo Shepherd is an associate editor at AlterNet and a Brooklyn-based freelance writer and editor. Formerly the executive editor of The FADER, her work has appeared in VIBE, SPIN, New York Times and various other magazines and websites. Tana Ganeva is an AlterNet editor. Follow her on Twitter. You can email her at tanaalternet@gmail.com.