Journalists should be ‘emptying their desks’ over Russiagate flop, Wikileaks editor tells RT (VIDEO)…(5…)
RT.com
27 Mar, 2019
Russiagate hysteria has ushered in a “dark period” for mainstream journalism, Wikileaks’ editor-in-chief told RT, adding that in a just world, the countless journalists who peddled the Russia collusion theory would be out of work.
Speaking to Going Underground host Afshin Rattansi, Kristinn Hrafnsson noted that within twenty-four hours of Hillary Clinton’s “humiliating” defeat in the 2016 election, “Russia became the entity that everything should be blamed on.” But with Robert Mueller’s special investigation ending with a collusion-less murmur, it’s difficult to imagine how journalism will ever recover from two years of Russiagate howling, Hrafnsson said.
“We’ve had this frenzy in the media, an absolutely neo-McCarthyist era which is a total humiliation for journalism. Who has gained? I can tell you who has lost. Journalism in general has lost. This is an extremely dark period for mainstream media, especially in the United States and for those who cater to that market.
Insisting that the endless reams of anonymously-sourced collusion “scoops” amount to journalistic malpractice that far surpasses the Iraq WMD fiasco, the Wikileaks editor-in-chief expressed amazement that there has been little to no professional ramifications for reporters who bought into the baseless conspiracy.
“I have no idea how the mainstream media, who were most active in this Russiagate frenzy, will recover. I simply don’t see that happening. In a normal world, a lot of journalists would be emptying their desks today.
He singled out Guardian reporter Luke Harding, who once called Wikileaks a “useful idiot” for Russia, and was behind a highly-controversial story published in November which alleged that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had made several visits to Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Wikileaks is currently suing The Guardian over the uncorroborated story.
“Who’s the idiot?” Hrafnsson asked. “Luke Harding published a book called ‘Collusion’ where he maintains that there had been collusion and that Wikileaks was in the midst of it. But his own paper is now printing front page stories telling him that he was wrong. I mean, does he still have a job at the Guardian?”
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