2010-11-14 Once Upon a Time in Sweden - A Selection

Here are some English language articles covering the rape allegations made against Julian Assange in Sweden in August 2010. In a legal case that can only be described as a quagmire, (if not Kafkaesque), the media's coverage of it has accordingly been confused and confusing in equal measure. Not surprisingly, the most coherent and least sensationalist analysis has come from bloggers rather than MSM reporters.

David Leigh of The Guardian on August 22: "Allegation apparently leaked to press by police" http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/aug/22/WikiLeaks-julian-assange-sweden

Scott Horton of Harper's Magazine on August 23 correctly advised that those following the story should accept nothing at face value.
http://harpers.org/archive/2010/08/hbc-90007522

Angella Johnson of the Daily Mail on August 29, with the first story to feature interviews with the two women making the allegations against Assange.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1307137/Supporters-dis...

Guy Rundle of Crikey provides a lucid take on the quagmire on September 9, reporting that Birgitta Jónsdóttir's comments about Assange's character were misrepresented in a particularly slanderous Daily Beast article.
http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/09/09/rundle-WikiLeaks-i-havent-seen-accus...

Kelley Vlahos of Antiwar.com provides further media criticism, with links to reasoned analysis from James Fallows at Atlantic, blogger Fabius Maximus, and anti-WikiLeaks maniacs such as Jonah Goldberg:
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2010/09/02/fallows-others-taking-another-loo...

At this point a discerning reader may notice a common caveat running through many blog posts on the subject of Assange's rape allegations: Try not to believe anything for now, for there is no objective reality.

Then of course we have some examples of yellow journalism, 2.0.
Step 1: Facebook-stalk Julian Assange's son Daniel;
Step 2: Use content from his FB page without permission;
Step 3. Publish his comments as bona fide source material

Guess who? News Limited - "We Report, You Swallow".
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/my_wiki_dad_just_awful_with_t...

Read Daniel Assange's wry rebuttal and corrections here:
http://www.lemma.org/?p=192

Undeterred by the fact that such an article had appeared in the sleazy NY Post, Fairfax journos chirped their own excerpts from the same non-story. In this case, Asher Moses of the Sydney Morning Herald (who should know better, as the ACMA blacklist WikiLeaks released provided him with lots of bread & butter for many months) published the same poison here:
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/WikiLeaks-sex-scandal-d...