Our ‘Obsessive’ Coverage of Assange

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Some readers have asked us why we are “obsessed” with the case of Julian Assange.

One can read every day in American and European newspapers about the mistreatment of journalists in China, Iran, Russia and other U.S. adversaries. That news is hardly suppressed in the West.

But news of Julian Assange, a victim of Western mistreatment, is suppressed.

Consortium News’ mission is to report news omitted or suppressed by Western media, not to merely repeat what is already widely available.

We have no influence over what those other governments do, governments that see Western criticism as interference in their internal affairs and as hypocrisy in light of what the West is doing to one of its own journalists.

But we have some influence over the behavior of our own governments and that’s our responsibility.

There’s another reason for our heavy focus on this story:  The Assange case is one of the most important press freedom cases in modern Western history. No less than the future of a viable democracy and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is at stake. 

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