by Currie Jean

Created on: March 14, 2011

For anyone only casually following the mainstream media's version of events, it's understandably difficult to tell whether an anti-Assange smear campaign is under way. This is because these very sources (The New York Times, the Guardian, and twenty-four-hour American news channels, especially Fox 'News') comprise the bulk of the media participating in the smear.

Since its establishment in 2006, WikiLeaks has released more leaks than all the rest of the world's media released in combination (1). WikiLeaks has put some of the most prolific and respected of the established news media to shame, and has embarrassed the world's most powerful governments at the same time, especially in its gradual release of United States diplomatic cables. It would be absurdly naive to think that the quantity and quality of power exhibited by WikiLeaks wouldn't bring a retaliatory smear campaign down upon its founder and self-proclaimed 'lightning rod,' Julian Assange.

A smear campaign is an attempt to destroy a person's public image and credibility by associating that person with stigmatized groups like rapists, terrorists, criminals and racists. While a smear doesn't necessarily involve telling lies, all kinds of put-downs, character attacks and accusations can be used to execute a smear. Such claims are usually either false, dubious or impossible to verify. The smear launched at WikiLeaks and Assange has come from several fronts, in subtle as well as blatantly dirty forms.

American figures accuse Assange of 'terrorism' and demand execution for 'treason.' (2)

Sarah Palin implied that Assange is a terrorist when she wondered, "Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders?" U.S. Vice President Joe Biden outright labeled Assange a "high-tech terrorist." Fox 'News' political commentator Bob Beckel encapsulated the viciousness of the American branch of the smear campaign when he said, "A dead man can't leak stuff. This guy's a traitor, he's treasonous, and he has broken every law of the United States. And I'm not for the death penalty, so there's only one way to do it: illegally shoot the son of a bitch." (3)

Assange has never been a citizen of the United States so it's impossible for him to be a traitor of that country, and if releasing leaks is all it takes for a journalist to be considered a terrorist - that is, an enemy of the state - in the US, the American First Constitutional Amendment is already dead. Assange pointed out in an MSNBC interview

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