Journalist For Time Magazine Announces His Eagerness To Defend US Drone Strike Killing Julian Assange

from the journalism! dept

We've already discussed the odd and somewhat sickening way in which certain mainstream journalists have been clearly cheering on the criminalization of investigative journalism, but Time Magazine's Michael Grunwald took it to a new and incredibly disgusting level this weekend, with a now deleted tweet in which he gleefully announced his eagerness to see the US kill Julian Assange, and then to defend the government for doing so:

In case you can't see that, it says:

I can't wait to write a defense of the drone strike that takes out Julian Assange.

This isn't just cheering on despicable government actions -- including the extrajudicial execution of a fellow journalist -- but it's saying ahead of time that no matter what the situation, he'll be right there to back up the official party line from the government. Today's modern journalist, Michael Grunwald, is going beyond the typical stenographer role of so many journalists covering the government, to the point where he's directly letting the government know that he'll be their propagandist backing up a despicable and heinous act.

This has nothing to do with whether or not anyone likes Assange. From all the reports, he seems like a perfectly dislikable individual. I don't agree with many of his views on the world or how he goes about doing certain things that he does. But I certainly support his ability to stay alive.

Of course, this isn't new territory for Grunwald and Time Magazine. In "defending" his tweet, he pointed to a column he wrote a few months ago, in which he directly supports taking away Americans' rights if it means stopping terrorists.

Eventually, Grunwald deleted the tweet, but not so much because it's despicable and indefensible, but rather because leaving it up, according to Grunwald "gives Assange supporters a nice safe persecution complex to hide in." Only an hour later did he apologize, saying that the original tweet was "dumb."

Either way, why would Time Magazine employ someone who flat out joyfully proclaims his eagerness to support the US murdering the head of a competing news organization -- one that has shown what a joke Time Magazine has been in terms of holding the government accountable. What major government abuse stories has Time broken lately?

Filed Under: drones, extrajudicial killing, journalism, julian assange, michael grunwald, propaganda, time magazine