Self-preservation plays a part in media’s blindness. (Photo: Daily News, Sri Lanka)
I was going to write another article today about a different topic, but I backed down because I didn't think I could deliver the kind of fiery, forceful, unmitigated argument it would need to be without risking getting banned from social media and blogging platforms.
The article I was planning on writing, which you'll just have to imagine now, would have been titled "
'Assange Can Leave Whenever He Wants!' No, Idiot, He Can't." The feature image was going to be a screen shot of a blue-checkmarked empire loyalist named Greg Olear
tweeting the infuriatingly dopey argument that Assange is free to just waltz out the embassy doors whenever he wants, so therefore he isn't actually being imprisoned by an Orwellian power establishment for publishing authentic documents about powerful people.
Never mind the fact that you can say exactly the same thing about literally anyone under political asylum; they are all free to leave the political asylum they've been granted at any time, and pointing this out is just describing the thing that political asylum is. Never mind the fact that a
UN panel ruled that Assange is being arbitrarily detained by the threat of imprisonment. Never mind that the same US government which
tortured Chelsea Manning is currently
openly pursuing Assange's arrest because of his publications, making the assertion that he's "free to leave" the same as saying he's "free" to jump off a cliff. People don't want to believe that their government imprisons journalists, so whenever Assange is in the news you see this argument making the rounds.
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