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March 2023 Issue [Letter from Washington]

Alternative Facts

How the media failed Julian Assange
Julian Assange, 2015 © Andy Gotts/Camera Press/Redux

Julian Assange, 2015 © Andy Gotts/Camera Press/Redux

[Letter from Washington]

Alternative Facts

How the media failed Julian Assange
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Every year on the first of December, the Committee to Protect Journalists publishes its global prison census, documenting the number of journalists behind bars around the world. The 2022 edition set a grim record: 363 jailed journalists. Scanning the list—organized alphabetically by first name—and scrolling down to the J’s, we see that Juan Lorenzo Holmann Chamorro, publisher of the Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa, has been locked up since 2021 on charges of money laundering, part of the Ortega dictatorship’s crackdown on independent media. Next is Juret Haji, the director of the Xinjiang Daily, detained since 2018 after a colleague…

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 is the Washington editor of Harper’s Magazine. His most recent book is The Spoils of War.


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March 2023

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