whistleblowing

Genocide: The Gaze from the Abyss

Left-progressive websites don’t always get it right. Take Media Lens, for example. In October, we discussed the corporate media invention of so-called ‘disinformation experts’. We lampooned the claim that although journalists are ‘working within profit-maximising, billionaire-owned, advertiser-dependent, government-subsidised media, they are nevertheless exposing “disinformation” without the slightest trace of bias’. Last May, the BBC unveiled […]

A Duty to Obey: David McBride, Whistleblowing and Following Orders

The unpardonable, outrageous trial of Australian whistleblower David McBride was a brief affair.  On November 13, it did not take long for the brutal power of the Commonwealth to become evident.  McBride, having disclosed material that formed the Australian public about alleged war crimes by special forces in Afghanistan, was going to be made an […]

Daniel Ellsberg is Lauded in Death by the Same Media that Lets Assange Rot in Jail

Rightly, there’s been an outpouring of tributes to Daniel Ellsberg following the announcement of his death last Friday, aged 92. His leaking of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 revealed that Washington officials had systematically lied for decades about US military conduct in Vietnam. The disclosure of 7,000 pages of documents, and subsequent legal battles to […]

Passing of Peace Activist and Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg

Daniel Ellsberg marches in the San Francisco Pride Parade to free whistleblower Chelsea Manning, June 29, 2014 (Photo by R.D. Harris) Daniel Ellsberg died on June 16, fighting to the end to warn of the existential threat of nuclear war. The 92-year-old whistleblower left a legacy of peace activism dating to his courageous release of […]

Hypocritical Commemorations

Selected days for commemoration serve one fundamental purpose. Centrally, they acknowledge the forgotten or neglected, while proposing to do nothing about it. It’s the priest’s confession, the chance for absolution before the next round of soiling. These occasions are often money-making exercises for canny businesses: the days put aside to remember mothers and fathers, for […]

How WikiLeaks Revolutionised the World of Journalism

Stefania Maurizi is an investigative journalist working for the Italian daily Il Fatto Quotidiano. She has worked on all WikiLeaks releases of secret documents and partnered with Glenn Greenwald to reveal the Snowden Files about Italy. In an interview with Eresh Omar Jamal of The Daily Star, she talks about her latest book, Secret Power: WikiLeaks and Its […]