'AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the argument that we hear, and the corporate media certainly in the United States repeated over and over, that he is not like newspapers like yours — you were the editor of The Guardian — or The New York Times, though he worked with all of you, because he released names, he endangered people? Can you respond to that?
ALAN RUSBRIDGER: I certainly can. He wasn’t the first person to do that. There was another website that released material. And it’s now become apparent that he actually went to some attempts certainly to tip the U.S. government off, before he felt the necessity to release them. Now, I mean, we had disagreements about that at the time. We weren’t in touch. And I don’t think the five newspapers knew of his attempts to alert the authorities.'
F* sake - he had to release the materials including names because the graun hacks Leigh and Harding published the password that made the docs accessible to everyone. They were the ones who were completely blase about it while Assange was working into the night redacting as many names as he could. And then spreading the 'dinner party' lie that Assange had said they were informants so had it coming. I don't know what role Rusbridger himself had in all of that, or if he was still at the graun, but supremely dishonest to be presenting himself as a champion for Assange now, after years of complete silence (I think he made a few polite noises a year or so ago) and basically using him to burnish the graun's brand. He still avoids calling Assange a journalist too, git, and when Goodman tries to draw a parallel between Assange and Gershkovich, the US reporter imprisoned in Russia he responds:
'Well, Russia is an entirely different kind of state, so I wouldn’t want to make a direct comparison.'
Words fail...
jeers,
I
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