Same as it ever was: New York Times vs. Eugene V. Debs
Last edited Sun Jun 23, 2013, 07:24 PM - Edit history (1)
I was sorting through some old notes and found something Julian Assange wrote two years ago about the New York Times that seems to have particular relevance to the present moment.
Eugene V. Debs, of course, was prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917 -- the same law that the US government is throwing at whistleblowers and would love to throw at Assange if it ever gets its hands on him. But the part that jumped out at me was the Times calling Debs "a lawbreaker at large, an enemy of the human race." Sound familiar?
The link below goes to a New Statesman summary of a piece Assange had written for them. The article itself is behind a paywall -- but the quoted bits are quite sufficient:
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/04/assange-wikileaks-radical
Assange argues that the New York Times's hostility to WikiLeaks stems from the newspaper's illiberal tradition of failing to back organisations or figures that challenge established elites. He highlights the newspaper's failure to support the American pacifist and anti-war campaigner Eugene Debs, who was imprisoned for ten years for making an anti-war speech in 1918.
"The New York Times, true to form, had been calling for [Debs's] imprisonment for more than two decades, saying in an editorial of 9 July 1894 that Debs was 'a lawbreaker at large, an enemy of the human race. There has been quite enough talk about warrants against him and about arresting him,' " writes Assange. "Seen within this historical perspective, the New York Times's performance in the run-up to the US-led invasion of Iraq, and its hostile attitude to WikiLeaks today, are not surprising."
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