Transcript of Julian Assange’s remarks in the ‘Can we trust the media?’ debate, Splendour in the Grass 2013

I feel for the other side, I really do.

Can we trust the media?

That’s the media that has called for me and my staff to be assassinated, droned, rendered and prosecuted? For espionage, for our publications, and our involvement in the Snowden case? Even this year ‘The Wall Street Journal’ and ‘The Washington Post’ have pushed this junk.

Noam Chomsky in ‘The Common Good’ wrote that “the smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum…”

We live in a media-ocracy. What’s politically possible is defined by the media environment.

In Australia, Murdoch’s News Corporation owns 60% of the mainstream media, one of the worst concentrations of media ownership in the world.

I started WikiLeaks because I understood this reality; the media frame defines the political possibility. 

So, to bring about meaningful change, we have to enlarge the media frame.  With WikiLeaks we have had significant successes in achieving this in some areas, though more needs to be done.  We have to improve the access and quality of media of information to all Australians and to the world.

That’s why we’ve set up the WikiLeaks Party, and that’s why I’m running this year for election to the Australian Senate.  And that’s why my colleague, human rights lawyer Kellie Tranter, here today, is also running for the Senate for the WikiLeaks Party. Continue Reading…

“Moral courage – not afraid to say or do what you believe to be right.”
– Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, The Memoirs of Field Marshall Montgomery, 1958

The farce is done, and one might say that the farce has ended – at least for now.  An interregnum of unclear and sinister stupidity has descended in Fort Meade, Maryland. Certainly, Rabelais would express considerable disgust at the folly that has been the Manning trial, a show of a state’s indifference to the human credentials of the accused.  Draw the curtain, the farce is played.

The story of WikiLeaks, the most modern and most daring of journalistic projects, is very much a story of the link with this young man.  That is where the farce continues, thudding and pulsating away in the briefs of prosecutors who are desperate to get their mitts on the organisation and supporters.  The Manning-WikiLeaks bond is a bond, part holy, part profane, a mix so terrifying to establishment security that it has brought the vulgar and brutish out to play.

The target lies well and beyond Manning.  Lead prosecutor Major Ashden Fein was clutching at straws in his summing up.  Julian Assange, first placed candidate for the WikiLeaks Party for the Australian Senate, potentate of the new publishing, was facilitating perfidy on the part of Manning.  Assange was “the enemy” who had been aided by a wobbly anti-patriot.  “Your honour, he was not a whistleblower, he was a traitor.”
Continue Reading…

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Remarks at Splendour in the Grass debate by WikiLeaks Party NSW Senate Candidate Kellie Tranter

To work out whether or not you can trust the media you need to consider what the media is doing and what it is supposed to do.

In 2010 the Director of TED Talk, Chris Anderson, put it to Julian Assange that “WikiLeaks has released more classified documents than the rest of the world’s media combined.” Julian replied, “Can it possibly be true, it’s a worry isn’t it, that the rest of the world media is doing such a bad job that a little group of activists is able to release more of that type of information than the rest of the world press combined.”

And what about journalists? According to the Declaration of Principles on the Conduct of Journalists, “respect for truth and the right of the public to truth is the first duty of the journalist”.  In other words, journalists must be servants to truth and they must be able to publish the truth. Their greatest assets must be intelligence, scepticism and determination. Continue Reading…