Wait, We All Trust Julian Assange Now?

September 07, 2016

Wait, We All Trust Julian Assange Now? That Julian Assange?

Raise your hand if you expected to see Sean Hannity giving a warm, courteous interview to Julian Assange of WikiLeaks this year:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Tuesday that he plans to release several batches of documents pertaining to the Hillary Clinton campaign within the next few weeks and the first could come out as soon as next week.

"The first batch is coming reasonably soon," Assange said in an interview on "Hannity." "We're quite confident about it now. We might put out some teasers as early as next week or the week after."

Assange didn't give specifics about what would be in the leak, but has promised that WikiLeaks would release documents on the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee that would have a significant impact on the looming general election.

Hannity says he is "conflicted," but Assange "did us a favor."

I'm sorry, am I the only one who remembers what else Julian Assange did?

David Leigh and Luke Harding's history of WikiLeaks describes how journalists took Assange to Moro's, a classy Spanish restaurant in central London. A reporter worried that Assange would risk killing Afghans who had co-operated with American forces if he put US secrets online without taking the basic precaution of removing their names. "Well, they're informants," Assange replied. "So, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it." A silence fell on the table as the reporters realised that the man the gullible hailed as the pioneer of a new age of transparency was willing to hand death lists to psychopaths. They persuaded Assange to remove names before publishing the State Department Afghanistan cables. But Assange's disillusioned associates suggest that the failure to expose "informants" niggled in his mind.

Does no one else remember the consequences of Assange's actions?

The Taliban has issued a chilling warning to Afghans, alleged in secret US military files leaked on the internet to have worked as informers for the Nato-led coalition, telling Channel 4 News "US spies" will be hunted down and punished.

Speaking by telephone from an undisclosed location, Zabihullah Mujahid told Channel 4 News that the insurgent group will investigate the named individuals before deciding on their fate.

"We are studying the report," he said, confirming that the insurgent group already has access to the 92,000 intelligence documents and field reports.

"We knew about the spies and people who collaborate with US forces. We will investigate through our own secret service whether the people mentioned are really spies working for the US. If they are US spies, then we know how to punish them."

Does just take a perceived anti-Hillary perspective to erase years of work to advance an anti-American agenda?

Since 2010, however, it has been pretty hard to make the case that WikiLeaks is a neutral transmission system. Nearly all its major operations have targeted the U.S. government or American corporations. When WikiLeaks released U.S. government cables, its stated purpose was to reveal "the contradictions between the US's public persona and what it says behind closed doors." By contrast, when it released Syrian government cables in July, Assange was quick to point out, "The material is embarrassing to Syria, but it is also embarrassing to Syria's opponents." This at a time when 14,000 people had already been killed in the uprising against Bashar al-Assad's regime.

Assange also hasn't improved his credibility with his TV talk show, The World Tomorrow — particularly with its first episode, a softball interview with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. It doesn't help that the show is aired by RT (formerly Russia Today), a network funded by the Russian government. And in an ironic twist, the transparency advocate has now cast his lot with Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, a past World Tomorrow guest and a leader with a less-than-sterling record on press freedom.

Assange's relentless anti-American focus alienated former colleagues: "This one-dimensional confrontation with the USA is not what we set out to do."

Does anybody remember the WikiLeaks response to the Paris terror attacks? "At least 39 dead tonight in Paris terror atacks. 250k dead in Syria & Iraq. Both a direct result of US, UK, France feeding Sunni extremists." Yeah, yeah, it's always America's fault, we can never blame the actual perpetrators.

Did I miss a meeting? Was there some vote on forgetting and forgiving all this if Assange leaks some information that's embarrassing to Hillary?

ESPN and the Way the World of Sports Gets Covered

I continue to hear some irate reactions to this piece; honestly, I think one of the least controversial arguments I've ever made. Someone raised the question about whether my rallying cry "I just want to enjoy watching the game" is directed more at the players or at the world of sports media, and that's a fair distinction to raise. It's also fair to ask whether when we say "the world of sports media," we really mean, "ESPN."

Let me take you back to the 1980s and early 1990s, before the dawn of the Internet. If you were a fan of a team and lived outside the geographic area, you had a really hard time finding coverage of your team. Never mind finding good coverage; you were often limited to the box scores in the newspaper. Maybe the newspaper would run two-paragraph summaries on page D4. The local evening news would recite the scores at the tail end of the sportscast. The pre-game and post-game shows would pay attention to the biggest and most consequential games, but if your team wasn't competitive or good that year, you were out of luck. (Why, yes, I'm a Jets fan, why do you ask?)

The national sports media was limited — Sports Illustrated and other magazines, USA Today, the short-lived The National — and it focused heavily on the glamour franchises in the biggest cities: the Los Angeles Lakers, the Chicago Bears, Bulls and Cubs, the Boston Celtics and Red Sox, the New York Yankees, the Dallas Cowboys, and San Francisco 49ers.

And then along came ESPN, with SportsCenter giving you the highlights from every game that occurred that day. It didn't matter if your team was terrible that year; if you were a Milwaukee Brewers fan, at some point in that hour or 90 minutes, you would get to see highlights from the Brewers game. ESPN's Sunday morning NFL pregame show previewed every game, even if it featured the two worst teams in the league; the Sunday evening NFL Primetime showed highlights from every game. It was revolutionary! And lo, there was much rejoicing from the sports fans across the land.

Of course, by the mid-to-late 1990s the Internet came along, and suddenly you could read the hometown coverage of your team from anywhere. And fan sites and blogs sprung up, offering intensely in-depth coverage and discussion of your team — some might call it obsessive coverage of the anterior cruciate ligament sprains of strangers.

Undoubtedly ESPN felt the need to adapt; not only did it have new competitors and others copying their style — CNNSI! Fox Sports! — it couldn't compete with the Internet when it came to in-depth of coverage of any particular team. Suddenly the teams started creating their own networks for coverage (YES for the New York Yankees); and the Leagues and conferences started creating their own channels)NFL Network, NBA Channel, MLB Network, the Golf Channel, the Big 10 Network, the SEC Channel . . .).

Facing enormous new competition — or maybe when it expanded and created ESPN2, competing against itself — ESPN decided to become a variation of talk radio, or sports talk radio. Believe it or not, there was a time when sports reporters were considered the creampuffs of journalism, nice and polite to everyone, adulatory to the winners, sympathetic to the losers. Howard Cosell stood out from the crowd for years, of course, and later Jim Rome stood out for being sneeringly obnoxious; it was genuinely shocking to see Rams quarterback Jim Everett flip out and attack Rome on the set when Rome repeatedly taunted his guest by calling him "Chris Everett."

At some point, ESPN concluded that strong opinions and impassioned arguments made for the most cost-effective programming, and Pardon the Interruption begat Around the Horn, which begat Stephen A. Smith, Colin Cowherd, Skip Bayless, Bill Simmons . . .

When your "beat" shifts from offering in-depth coverage of sports to offering controversial ("hot take") opinions on sports, the tone will shift and the previous audience will grow irritable. ESPN even reminded their contributors to . . .

refrain from political editorializing, personal attacks or "drive-by" comments regarding the candidates and their campaigns. Approved commentaries on sports-specific issues, or seeking responses from candidates on relevant news issues, are appropriate. However perceived endorsements should be avoided.

Twenty years ago, ESPN wouldn't have needed that memo; the majority of daily sports talk — who's gonna win, who's the best player, is that coach going to get fired — just didn't align with the major controversial political or social issues of the day. Today's ESPN jumps into modern controversies with two feet — an award to Caitlyn Jenner, simulcasting an Obama town hall on gun violence, NBA stars talking about violence in black communities, et cetera. It's hardly reactionary to miss the old ESPN, to be part of that audience attracted by one style of programming and turned off by the new offerings.

I see National Review's old friend — old, old friend! — Will Cain joined the ESPN team. I haven't caught his appearances often enough; do any regular viewers/listeners to ESPN radio know if he's been apolitical?

ADDENDA: Yesterday's Facebook Live chat can be found here. My favorite comment was from the gentleman who said, "This guy loves to hear himself talk." What was he expecting? Lots of special effects and chase scenes? Remarkable computer-generated images?