Bradley Manning: American MSM Acted as Adjuncts of the State, Censoring and Vetting Information in Order to Shape Public Opinion!

• Bradley Manning and the media! 
  by Naomi Spencer, http://www.wsws.org/ 
  At a military court hearing on Thursday, Army Private Bradley Manning read out a 35-page statement that, in addition to providing a courageous defense of his efforts to reveal the truth about US military actions, contained an extraordinary fact. Before he sent army files to WikiLeaks, he contacted both the Washington Post and the New York Times, but neither paper responded.
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  In his statement, Manning said he leaked the material because he believed they were “some of the most significant documents of our time, removing the fog of war and revealing the true nature of 21st century asymmetric warfare.” He explained that he felt morally obligated to alert the American public to war crimes being committed in its name.
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  The two major newspapers of the American liberal establishment felt no such obligation. Rather, they responded as they have repeatedly before, acting not as sources of information for the American people, but rather adjuncts of the state, censoring and vetting information in order to shape public opinion.
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  While publishing articles on select items acquired by WikiLeaks months after Manning’s attempt to pass on the material to the papers, neither the Times nor the Post reported that the soldier had approached them with the documents.
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  Manning acquired the documents while working as an Army intelligence analyst stationed outside Baghdad. The 25-year-old private explained that he was responsible for managing databases on incident reports from combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The material was not considered to be “very sensitive,” and Manning was required to create backup files of the data. Disturbed by what many of the entries revealed about the brutal nature of the occupations, Manning said he copied the war logs onto a disc and returned on leave to the United States with them saved on his computer.
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  Like the vast majority of documents and transcripts from the pre-trial hearings at Fort Hoode, Maryland, Manning’s statement is not available to the public or the press. A rush transcript was posted online by journalist Alexa O’Brien, who was present in the courtroom February 28.
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  “I believe that if the general public, especially the American public, had access to the information,” Manning explained, “this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general [and] as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan.”
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  “At this point I decided that it made sense to try to expose the SigAct [war logs] tables to an American newspaper,” he told the court. “I first called my local newspaper, the Washington Post, and spoke with a woman saying that she was a reporter. I asked her if the Washington Post would be interested in receiving information that would have enormous value to the American public. Although we spoke for about five minutes concerning the general nature of what I possessed, I do not believe she took me seriously.”
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  Manning continued: “I then decided to contact the most popular newspaper, the New York Times.” The public editor’s tip line, Manning explained, routed him through a series of pre-recorded options to a machine. “I left a message stating I had access to information about Iraq and Afghanistan that I believed was very important.” He never received a reply.
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  After these failed efforts, Manning said he decided to submit the materials to WikiLeaks to “help document the true cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Manning was arrested five months later, on May 28, 2010. WikiLeaks began publishing the leaked documents two months later.
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  For this courageous defense of the First Amendment, Manning has been held for more than 1,000 days without trial, subjected to abusive treatment and solitary confinement, and denied whistleblower protections. The Obama administration has charged him with 22 counts of violating the Espionage Act, including “aiding the enemy,” a crime that carries the death penalty. Government prosecutors are pursuing a sentence of life in prison.
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