The news that more that 150 Lawyers and legal academics signed an open letter calling on the British government to stop extradition proceedings for Julian Assange and set him free was widely reported in the UK mostly accurately for example in ITV news and The Press Gazette as well as The Evening Express and The Sun, although the latter inserted some inaccuracies.
LBC too produced a text article on the subject mostly syndicated via the Press Association (now called PA Media). But LBC inserted a 3 minute plus video by LBC presenter James O’Brien that was produced more than a year ago on the subject of Julian Assange. This video was full of inaccuracies, mainly repeating several times that Julian Assange had faced charges and was charged in Sweden over rape. Here is the original article captured in Google cached.
Even at this stage when the Swedish Preliminary investigation has been opened and closed three times without any charges been issued and when the last time it was closed, in November 2019, it was clearly done so in the absence of evidence, you would think that British Journalists and producers would automatically reject previous assertions by James O’Brien. This did not happen. Here is the video in question:
Interestingly, although he explains he is against the extradition of Julian Assange to the US, he invalidates even that point by claiming incorrectly that the publishing of classified information is illegal and that a judge should decide on the matter.
Back in 2016 he interviewed for the BBC Roland Adjovi, from UNWGAD, judge for yourselves whether he was an impartial reporter!
I wrote to LBC using their online complaints form, referencing all the necessary sources to dispel O’Brien’s claims and my efforts were met with success. Here is the LBC reply:
Many thanks for taking the time to get in touch with us at Global and share your feedback about a recent LBC article.
Together with the LBC News team, we have reviewed the content and I can confirm that we are happy the article text is accurate, however, on this occasion we have removed the studio presenter clip from the piece.
And indeed if you visit the article “Lawyers and academics call on Government to free Julian Assange” published on 17 August 2020, 09:10 and updated on 18 August 2020, 13:33 you will see the video by James O’Brien has been removed.
Yet another example of how effective inaccuracy complaints can be in changing the narrative in the Julian Assange case! Keep your eyes open and your pens sharp! We are winning the disinformation war against the WikiLeaks publisher with our actions be it on the street, through letter writing, by lobbying, drawing, singing, whatever each and every one of us can do.
Archived Article: http://archive.is/Fl2SE
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Excellent expose on how LBC Presenter James O’Brien, like so many others in the ‘Embedded Media’ made an absolute C–t of himself in relation to the Assange debacle and I have written to LBC to tell them about it. Thank you for your efforts here. There is clearly a Tipping Point being approached, if not already arrived and I have also written to my local MP, Grant Shapps (another C–t) using this to crank up the pressure on him to act on Assange’s behalf.
Thank you GreekEmmy, Great Work.
Once again I praise Wise up Action for their tireless work in correct the record on the Julian Assange miss-trail. It shames me that so many of the mainstream deliberately report falsely about this case. As Dame Vivienne Westwood told the BBC interviewer recently ‘You need to do your homework darling’. Sadly in the BBC case they know they are falsely reporting only to smear Assange, something I find shameful given what he is enduring while held in solitary confinement since April 2019 and the public service he has done. Without him and WikiLeaks we would never have known about Guantanamo Bay, illegal prison in Cuba and human rights abuses in Afghanistan and Iraq, and many more important news stories. Thank you Wiseup, for your great work.