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How the US media is dumping on WikiLeaks - and censoring the cable disclosures
In a hard-hitting piece in defense of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange - now officially named as a fugitive - Alexander Cockburn contends that American newspapers have colluded with the US government to conceal some of the leaked embassy cables.
He cites research by Gareth Porter, who identified a cable released by WikiLeaks that provides a detailed account of how Russian specialists countered official US claims that Iran had missiles capable of reaching Europe, or that Iran intended to develop such a capability. Porter wrote:
"Readers of the two leading US newspapers never learned those key facts about the document. The New York Times and the Washington Post reported only that the United States believed Iran had acquired such missiles... from North Korea.
Neither newspaper reported the detailed Russian refutation of the US view on the issue or the lack of hard evidence...
The Times, which had obtained the diplomatic cables not from WikiLeaks but from The Guardian... did not publish the text of the cable.
The Times story said the newspaper had made the decision not to publish 'at the request of the Obama administration'. That meant that its readers could not compare the highly distorted account of the document in the Times story against the original document without searching the WikiLeaks website."
Aside from this self-censorship, Cockburn also remarks on the distaste among the "official" US press for WikiLeaks after its previous releases of documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.