20240703 To The Daily Blog
Kia ora. I've been quite involved with the case of Julian Assange since setting up the New Zealanders For Julian Assange website and facebook groups back in early 2021 - and have been following the case since Wikileaks first started.
During this time we became aware that our media was not doing any ( of its own ) reporting on the case which lead to my making an official complaint to Radio New Zealand in which I opened by asking that they create an additional category for 'omission' - which is the main means by which I have learned that our media controls the narrative. They denied this of course so I forwarded my complaint with their response to the Office of The Ombudsman who cunningly deflected it telling me that because I was not a journalist I could have no greater interest than the ordinary person - intimating that the complaint could only be pursued by those who had something to lose - i.e. journalistic freedom.
So I set to and wrote personally addressed e-mails to 550 journalists working in New Zealand's media organisations and to 220 academics teaching media and political studies in our tertiary educational centres and to all 120 Members of Parliament asking that they pay some attention to the case of Julian Assange and to the implications it had on the willingness of our journalists to hold power to account.
Martyn Bradbury and Nicky Hager were the only reponses I ever received.
To their credit Radio New Zealand journalists have ( since my complaint ) conducted some very good long form interviews - although long periods ( especially if you're the one waiting it out in solitary confinement ) passed between them. We've archived links to the audio for these interviews here.
I have since repeated these hugely time-consuming email campaigns to encourage and facilitate support through sending links to resources and pro-forma letters on our website ( which had its URL taken down by our provider ) and to our Facebook Group - which we can only conclude has been subject to shadow-banning through their algorithm as despite our having 578 members our posts often attract either zero or close to zero reach or interactions.
Ostensibly we New Zealanders live in a democracy but our media professionals have mysteriously been showing very little interest in what the European Federation of Journalists is calling 'an extremely dangerous precedent' which is already having a chilling effect on journalists' willingness to investigate stories that truly hold power to account.
Consequently there has been very little awareness about this case among the New Zealand public and a commensurate lack of concern that might otherwise have translated (given that we are a functioning, responsive democracy ) into diplomatic pressure that could have been exerted through our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade , to get Julian Assange released, in the first instance, and ultimately, to start investigations into the evidence of violations of the Geneva Convention by U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan.