The Twitter world is fraught with theories, unsubstantiated claims, and intrigue today concerning the whereabouts of WikiLeaks’s founder Julian Assange. Tweets like, “He’s out of the embassy” have been fueling the fire following a rather bizarre, cryptic tweet about Assange from the U. S. Navy, which was quickly retracted a couple of days ago.
As of this writing, the only the media outlet covering this modern-day “Where’s Waldo” other than Liberty Nation is the U.K.-based Express, which is known across the pond as a rather sensational tabloid. Still, Brits say that more often than not, the Express gets the story right. “Others, however, believe Julian Assange may no longer be holed up in London’s Ecuadorian embassy,” they report, “but instead working with US President Donald Trump.”
The truth here is that no one seems to know where Assange is at the moment – and the reference concerning President Trump is quite baffling. But the whole situation is turning into a puzzling enigma based on the fact that the 46-year-old Australian native who publishes secret information and classified data had, until recently, not left the confines of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since August 2012.
Fake News: Step Right up and Read All About it
This comes on the heels of a Wiki tweet in the final hours of 2017 (depending on your time zone) meant to cause problems for the New York Times.
As the story unfolded on conservative media last night, The Times cooperated (or colluded, one might say) with the State Department back when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State. While it is not illegal to give government agencies a heads up about what is yet to be published, it is a clear violation of professional ethics. A story such as this was meant to put a knife through the heart of the New York Times credibility (or what little they have left considering the Times’ increasingly leftist bias).
The tweet contained an email from Times Reporter Scott Shane to Phillip Crowley, who was U.S. Asst. Sec. of State for Public Affairs at the State Department back then. The information would presumably move on up the communication food chain at State and on to Secretary Clinton.
Why does this matter? It demonstrates that the boundaries between the media and government had been crossed to give State a “heads up” concerning what news was headed down the track from arguably the most powerful (leftist) newspaper in the country. This would have been a sordid affair, and The Times would have had to do some fast talking if, indeed, the email proved to be true.
The Daily Wire picked up the story and ran with it. However, much has come to light since that questions the efficacy of both the Wire article and the Wiki tweet.
Liberty Nation U.K. Asst. Editor Mark Angelides did some digging on this story. “Looking back through to 2010, I found that the writer Scott Shane had actually published a complete list of how the New York Times would be writing about the Cablegate countries. So, it was not something that was a “secret exchange.”
Meanwhile, a verbal food fight ensued unabated on Twitter today between accused Times reporter Scott Shane and the Wikileaks Illuminati. Shane calls the WikiLeaks tweet “nonsense,” and the Wiki folks are striking back. The punches are being thrown here which you are welcome to read if you really want to get down into the weeds.
As such, the story claiming that the New York Times gave the Clinton State Department a heads-up about their upcoming plans turned out to be, well, kind of a tasty nothing burger that can be considered misleading at best, if not outright fake news at worst.
This is very concerning to us as political analysts, and should be to conservative readers as well.
A Conspiracy Under Every Rock
Perhaps it’s not surprising that liberty-minded Americans see a conspiracy hiding under every rock. This is principally due to the trust that has eroded between the American public and both the government and the media. When there is a lack of faith in fundamental foundations of our society, such as an independent press, it should come as no surprise that citizens are often swept up in controversy that should not exist.
This makes complete sense if you take an aerial view of what’s going on in the U.S. today. When the IRS persecutes people for their political beliefs, and the Justice Department is not meting out justice equally across partisan lines, all road signs read Bumpy Road Ahead for the conservative movement.
But the way to counter fake news is not with competing falsity. The conservative media must be vigilant in sourcing their articles before publishing them. We must be above reproach. Of course, everyone makes mistakes. But we need to be better than the extreme leftist rags out there who would rather publish spin and lies than truth.
Please know that when you access this site, the news you get has been appropriately sourced and vetted. And when our fellow journalists on the right get it wrong, we need to stand up for truth and call it as we see it.
At Liberty Nation, we count ourselves among the stalwarts of the conservative movement, but the one thing we endeavor to be at all times is a trustworthy source of news for our readers.
