Strange Bedfellows and Proxy Wars
April 12, 2019·6 comments·In Brief
When major news breaks, the coverage usually divides along familiar political lines. The arrest of Julian Assange shattered that pattern. Traditional allies split, unexpected coalitions formed, and the story itself became a weapon for unrelated battles. The question is: what does it mean when the media can't even agree on how to frame the facts?
- US media took a surprisingly Assange-friendly stance despite hawkish political rhetoric. While politicians called for tough accountability, journalists framed the arrest through the lens of press freedom and journalism's future. The language didn't match the political position.
- Coverage across countries operated under completely different logics. US outlets built explainer frameworks to shape interpretation. UK outlets mostly amplified government statements without investigation. Each media ecosystem seemed to be reporting on a different event entirely.
- The actual case became secondary to other agendas. Coverage fractured into clusters focused on Trump's prior WikiLeaks comments, Jeremy Corbyn's position, and Ecuadorian internal politics. The arrest itself was a vehicle for proxy wars being fought elsewhere.
- This breaks the usual coalition patterns that predict how stories unfold. WikiLeaks' Clinton email involvement created strange bedfellows: law-and-order hawks defending Assange while press freedom advocates attacked him. The traditional battle lines don't apply.
- When the standard ideological map stops working, it suggests something deeper is shifting in how information moves through institutions. The question isn't what happened to Assange. It's why the media couldn't tell the same story about it.
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Comments
Right with you Rusty. Thank goodness we have a whole mess of news covering Pamela Anderson’s tweets on this subject to guide us in our hour of need.
A veritable oasis!
Unless it’s a trick, the arrest of Assange is a total disaster.
A disaster for who, and in what way?
For those of us hoping for push back against the industrial military congressional surveillance and now mainstream media complex and the perpetual war machine of the power elite.
The really interesting thing about the whole Assange affair is: why didn’t all the hackers and leakers take their explosive material to the New York Times, Washington Post, or any one of dozens of ‘respected’ outlets around the world? Not one? Hm.
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