It often seems that the first thing the news media removes from the bigger, sustaining stories is common sense.
In the case of “politically oppressed” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, we’re supposed to forget or ignore the fact that he demands the freedom to make public classified information that would imperil the free world to the benefit of countries that likely would drag his dead carcass through the streets if he did the same to them.
And then go after his family.
Yet, now Assange, as blankly reported by Western news agencies and philosophically indulged by news commentators, is claiming that democratic countries, including Great Britain, the United States and Sweden — he is accused of rape in the latter — are picking on him, forcing him to seek political refuge in Ecuador.
Lost in the reporting and the ensuing discussions and debates as to whether Assange’s freedom-of-speech rights are being violated — whether he’s a victim of injustice — is the old schoolyard refrain spoken to fallen, sobbing bullies: “Well, you started it.”
The sound and video bite we saw and heard on all national newscasts, Aug. 19, was Assange, addressing the international media from a balcony at London’s Ecuadorian Embassy:
“I ask President Obama to do the right thing. The United States must renounce its witch hunt against WikiLeaks.”
I waited for a reporter to shout something like, “After revealing US military and diplomatic secrets, what did you expect from the United States, a party? The Key to the World Trade Center?”
There was another follow-up issue that went unasked and unexamined.
If WikiLeaks is the real deal that spills real secrets to enemies of Western democracies, why would Assange characterize an attempt to stop him a “witch hunt”? After practicing open espionage for the West’s enemies he now wants to be thought of as a make-believe character?
But such questions go unasked.
Assange demands that Obama and the US to “do the right thing”? That’s rich.
Absent from the TV sit-down interviews I’ve seen conducted with Assange have been some basic questions, including, “Why are your personal freedoms worth more than those of the rest of the free world?” And, “Above and beyond your journalistic freedoms, don’t you have a greater commitment to do right than to demonstrate your rights?”
It clearly appears that Assange and WikiLeaks chose to provide classified info to the West’s murderous enemies for no better reason than that it could — “Look, Ma, no hands!” — and that in this case WikiLeaks’ stated goal to provide “open governance” was either self-violated or just a slick, hollow catchphrase.
How does providing secret military info to despotic, radicalized, tyrannical regimes promote open governance?
For crying out loud, it does the opposite! Assange may have made it big as a leaker, but he’d never have made it as a plumber, ya know?
So, once again, a big news story is sustained here with little to no regard for its far larger, far more essential common-sense issues. Those are the issues first removed from the deck — if they even make the cut.
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Somewhere, on Aug. 21, Edwin Newman, the late NBC news anchor and lampoonist of silly words usage, was rolling his eyes, if not rolling over.
(One of Newman’s favorites was a sign that read, “Extinguish All Illuminations” when, he figured, “Turn Off the Lights” would’ve done it.)
WNBC-Ch. 4’s Aug. 21, 6 p.m. news included a report that anchor David Ushery introduced as the Long Island Rail Road’s “retro-fitting” of escalators.
Field reporter Chris Glorioso took it from there. He told us that yes, in fact, some of the LIRR’s escalators would be “retro-fitted.”
Judging from the rest of the report, it seemed that “retro-fitting” meant that the escalators would be “fixed” or “repaired.”