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Letters Editor
Kings Place,
90 York Way
London N1 9GU

Tuesday, 06 October 2020

Dear Sir/Madam,

The Guardian should hang its head in shame. During the month of September Julian Assange faced extradition proceedings in a British court. Although your readers wouldn’t know it from your coverage, prosecution lawyer James Lewis QC now accepts that any journalist publishing ‘state secrets’ can face charges under the United States Espionage Act.

The ‘crimes’ that Assange is accused of committing include revealing war crimes such as the air raid which killed 12 Iraqis, including 2 Reuters journalists, that was falsely portrayed as a firefight.

The Guardian benefited enormously from Wikileaks with front page headlines and a book, 'WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy' by David Leigh and Luke Harding. In the words of John Pilger ‘the Guardian creamed off WikiLeaks' revelations and claimed the accolades and riches that came with them’.  

The Five Filters website has compiled a list of dozens of Guardian articles that illustrate its overwhelming hostility towards Assange. These attacks have often been personal and couched in the most puerile terms.

Particularly invidious was James Ball, who confidently declared that ‘The only barrier to Julian Assange leaving Ecuador’s embassy is pride’. Ball assured his readers that ‘The WikiLeaks founder is unlikely to face prosecution in the US.’

Far more damaging was Luke Harding and Dan Collyn's article alleging that Paul Manafort, Trump’s ex-campaign manager, held secret talks with Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy. This article is widely accepted to be false, a product of disinformation. It has been comprehensively discredited e.g. by The Intercept yet the Guardian refuses to retract it and apologise.

Given the massive implications for press freedom in prosecuting a journalist for espionage, which is usually understood as spying on behalf of a foreign power, we would expect the Guardian to not only have covered the trial proceedings but to be campaigning vigorously at this threat to investigative journalism.

Instead, with the sole exception of a guest article by Brazil's Lula de Silva, the Guardian has remained virtually silent, apart from publishing a snide and churlish article by Hadley Freeman. Instead it is left to dissident Tory journalists like Peter Oborne and Peter Hitchens and journalists with integrity such as John Pilger and Craig Murray, to take up the cudgels on behalf of Assange.

In the light of the Guardian’s previous battles for press freedom, your failure to cover what is happening to Julian Assange is shameful.

Yours faithfully,


Tony Greenstein