26 Comments

Excellent piece!

I'm bookmarking this:

"At its best, journalism is simply gathering and publishing information that serves the “public interest”. Public: that is, it serves you and me. It does not require a diploma. It does not require a big building, or a wealthy owner. Whisper it: any of us can do journalism. And when we do, journalistic protections should apply."

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Jan 30, 2023Liked by Jonathan Cook

Thanks very much for this. Good to hear from a real journalist who isn't afraid to speak the truth. Dark and scary times when the voices of truth and reason are being suppressed and the msm ensures we get to hear their own biased version of events while using their tactic of divide and rule. It's getting a bit like living in early Rome when Christians were forced to go underground for fear of persecution.

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Is he safe or what’s the next step for him?

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Noam Chomsky's takedown of Andrew Marr is again duly noted. As is the fact that MSM journalists are less colorfully dressed versions of Renaissance courtiers, or more educated fluffers. In either case, their relationship with power is functionally similar.

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Thank you great speech wanted to write it down myself or record it very impressive love your work

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Jan 30, 2023Liked by Jonathan Cook

It is awful watching what they have done to Assange since when he first stepped into the embassy. I was a teenager then, and I'm now an adult; I have literally grown up watching my favourite journalist be tortured and destroyed by the state. The denial inspires a special amazement and disgust from me, because I am incapable of remembering a time when states did not visibly collaborate to perform slow motion executions of dissidents.

He is not only a revolutionary journalist, but a brilliant man, and I sorely miss the days when he was still able to be a public intellectual. He was even on Twitter at one point until he was inexplicably banned one day, sometime after his Internet was cut in the embassy if I recall correctly. He was not only informative, but he had a very sharp wit and was very funny; details about him long forgotten, especially with the long enduring propaganda campaign against him.

I still hold out hope he will somehow go free, however unlikely that outcome may be.

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"collusion": secret or illegal cooperation or conspiracy, especially in order to cheat or deceive others. Mr Cook choses his words carefully I assume from reading his writings. Here he lapses into the world of conspiracy theorists, and the kingdom of blog is where most choose to broadcast their often crackpot ideas. Mr Cook is not a crackpot but this article with it's intemperate language and his almost slanderous allegations against journalists is edging him in that direction. I suspect he, in his own way, like those journalists he is so dismissive of, writes for a specific audience (see adoring comments to this article) and even takes money from those who wish to read him. Unquestionably there exist journalists who are shills for some unworthy capitalist cause or other; but there are also many who do their best to report on matters as best they can, trying to expose greed, corruption and dishonesty in the powers that be, often facing obstacles put in their way by them. As a reader of and listener to the media for more than 50 years here in Canada, that has been my experience. And as Mr Cook surely knows, the interest of the public in the torment, as Mr Cook would have it of Mr Assange, simply can't be sustained for a long period. Other more interesting and important events have occurred in the world since his arrest that captures our attention far more than the travails of one journalist. Finally, I'm not sure why Mr Cook has focused on the "liberal" press as being particularly guilty of submission to capitalist owners. The liberal paper in his own neighborhood, Palestine/Israel, Ha'aretz, reports mercilessly on the Israeli governments torment of the Palestinians, which hardly seems to support his thesis in this article. Perhaps he can explain.

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What's awful about the Assage drama is that we are complicite to it

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Jan 30, 2023Liked by Jonathan Cook

As always just the best in pure journalism! I will frame this one and make a poster of it for my front door! I truly could not have done what Julian has done at such a cost. This is not old news this is an ongoing crime against humanity!

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Jan 30, 2023Liked by Jonathan Cook

so clear and concise. every sentient being should know these self-evident truths.

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We got Congress members. X and current presidents (and VPs) with top s4cret documents in their garages. basements, and bath rooms for lite reading yet Assange for communicating the truth of our government"s underbelly is behind bars and has been for about a decade. Who are the criminals who is the truth seeker.

Our government is not ours it the MICs/CIAs/oligarcal corporate elites

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Jan 30, 2023Liked by Jonathan Cook

This is one of the most comprehensive and thoughtful analyses of the rise and impact of corporate media power that I have read. Thank you. I 'm saving this for rereading.

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Jan 31, 2023·edited Jan 31, 2023

A pithy and accurate analysis of today's corporate media business model.

Unfortunately, many "credentialed" journalists can't admit that too often on matters of public interest they must toe the owner's line, which needn't be articulated in a newsroom. Skeptical? Imagine The Washington Post investigating Bezos. Good luck with that.

There's also the hubris, especially of prominent outlets and its reporters who bask in the status. The late Morley Safer, who disparaged Assange as "just a data dumper," was hardly alone in fancying himself in a priesthood ordained to sanctify what is newsworthy to the hoi polloi. Wikileaks defrocked them.

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Let he who is without farts, pass the first fart.

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"What drives a paper like the Guardian or New York Times is not their inner moral values. It is simply that they have a market."

We might just as accurately say that,

What drives a corporation such as x,y,z is not their inner moral values. It is simply that they have a market.

x,y,z = BigPharma, BigChemical, BigPesticide, BigOil.. BigAnythingYouCan Name.

"They have a market" and they are owned and controlled by so-called "Investors". Isn't it obvious that the problem is capitalism itself?

Now you don't have to be an Alternative-ist nor do you need to suggest a better way to run the world, to understand the situation. Just read this book, reviewed here with an excerpt available:

https://peterwebster.substack.com/p/bigyou-name-it-all-guilty

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