“One of the most horrifying aspects of what happened to Chelsea Manning - after leaking hundreds of thousands of documents, that were then used by newspapers across the world, to sell newspapers, and gain viewers, and win awards - She was then completely dropped by all of those papers.
The New York Times, which put those documents on the front page of it’s paper and won many awards, didn’t even cover her trial. It was one of the most significant trials in modern American history.
And they finally sent a journalist at the very end of the trial, because two independent journalists had shamed them into doing so. The same was true of CNN. And they sent a producer and camera person there. And the great independent journalist Alexa O’Brien began live-tweeting the CNN producer’s naps every day in the courtroom.... Wasn’t even paying attention to what was happening in the court.
In fact, when the military put Chelsea Manning on trial the judge said; there will be no transcripts of this hearing.
And so, we joined, with a handful of other news organisations and sued them. And we won the right to have the hearings documented. They were not even going to have transcripts of this trial! They said; fine, okay, there will be transcripts, but you have to pay for it. Okay, so we all pitched in and hired a court transcriber to go there.
Why is it, that it’s underpaid, independent journalists that have to shame the paper of record in this country, to covering the trial of a whistle blower whose documents they put on their front page. It tells you a lot about the priorities in our society.
Chelsea Manning is in that prison and no one cares.
How many people have ever discussed the Wikileaks documents, the State Department cables - any of those things - who are aware, that Chelsea Manning is languishing alone in a military prison with a thirty year sentence hanging over her head.
So we all can do something.
No matter what you do in your ordinary life, I would say one of the most important things you can do to fight for transparency, and any respect of a democratic process, is to raise the stories of those people who took the risks to provide us with information that should have been provided by the State, in order to encourage an informed debate in our country, about life and death policies.”
- Jeremy Scahill (x)
