WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be taping ten episodes of a half-hour interview show, in which he’ll chat with “key political players, thinkers, and revolutionaries from around the world.”
But presumably not revolutionaries from Russia, because his show will be aired on the Kremlin-controlled RT satellite television station. This is no Mikhail Mouse operation – they’ve got over 400 million subscribers worldwide. The BBC says RT television “has been accused by media analysts of strong pro-Kremlin bias in its coverage”:
Reports that Mr Assange would be appearing on RT were greeted on Twitter with a mixture of disbelief and anger from some.
Journalists asked how impartial the Wikileaks founder could be on a channel so closely tied to the Russian authorities.
"So, how exactly will Assange reconcile his belief in transparency/freedom with selling a show to the Kremlin?" asked Miriam Elder, Moscow correspondent for the UK's Guardian newspaper, which reported much of the secret material released by Wikileaks.
Claudia von Salzen, a journalist with Germany's Der Tagesspiegel, tweeted: "Has Julian Assange ever heard the story of the Russian whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky? He died in jail after accusing officials of fraud."
This is only surprising to the people who bought into the hogwash that Assange is some kind of Information Age freedom fighter, a “pioneer for a more just world,” as WikiLeaks describes him. WikiLeaks is all about power – the power to decide who gets to keep secrets. This power is aggressively taken away from the people of democratic societies, who would prefer their elected officials to make those decisions.
You might be wondering how Assange managed to skip bail and head for Moscow to do this TV show, since he’s still on the hook for charges of sexually assaulting two women in Sweden. No worries – according to ABC News, he’ll be doing the show from “the location of his house arrest in Britain.”
ABC also notes “the names of the guests are still to be disclosed,” even though the show is set to begin airing in March. I’m sure the Kremlin has those names.
