When it comes to the American media, I've long noted this revealing paradox. The person who (along with whomever is the heroic leaker) enabled "more scoops in a year than most journalists could imagine in a lifetime" – and who was quickly branded an enemy by the Pentagon and a terrorist by high U.S. officials – is the most hated figure among establishment journalists, even though they are ostensibly devoted to precisely these values of transparency and exposing serious government wrongdoing. (This transparency was imposed not only on the US and its allies, but also some of the most oppressive regimes in the Arab world).
But the contempt is far more intense, and bizarrely personal, from the British press, much of which behaves with staggering levels of mutually-reinforcing vindictiveness and groupthink when it's time to scorn an outsider like Assange. On Tuesday, Guardian columnist Seumas Milne wrote a superb analysis of British media coverage of Assange, and observed that "the virulence of British media hostility towards the WikiLeaks founder is now unrelenting." Milne noted that to the British press, Assange "is nothing but a 'monstrous narcissist', a bail-jumping 'sex pest' and an exhibitionist maniac" – venom spewed at someone "who has yet to be charged, let alone convicted, of anything."
