7 January 2022

(quote)
I wrote a piece for Australian online publisher Crikey just before Julian
Assange's extradition hearings resumed in September 2020 in which I regurgitated
a slur that has done enormous harm to his reputation.

Australian journalists should stop using the WikiLeaks treasure trove in their
stories if they wouldn't speak up for Assange, I'd written. Journalists like to
think they'd go to jail to protect a source. Well, their source was suffering in
London's high-security Belmarsh prison, I said.

The problem was I also wrote that Assange dumped the Iraq and Afghan war logs on
the internet without redacting names. I was wrong and lazy in repeating that
slur which appeared whenever you Googled Assange's name. That must make it true,
right? Two of Assange's well-known Australian supporters tried to correct me. To
my shame, I brushed them off.

Their overtures nagging at the back of my mind, I recently did what I should
have done at the time: read the submissions Assange's legal team made at his
extradition hearings and transcripts of witness testimony. I soon realized how
mistaken I was.
(/quote)
-- Cont'd at https://consortiumnews.com/2022/01/07/what-i-got-wrong-about-julian-assange/