You are, no doubt, waking up to some unexpected news: Julian Assange is a free man.

Citizen journalist Julian Assange, as you recall, founded Wikileaks in 2006 then set about publishing America’s deep state dirty laundry, especially as it related to war and diplomacy, or the lack of it.  And hooooo howdy did he piss off the wrong people.

As The Washington Post reported last night, early in President Obama’s first term:

WikiLeaks began publishing a series of bombshell disclosures. They included hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. military documents related to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and hundreds of thousands of confidential diplomatic cables that included candid and sometimes unflattering assessments by U.S. diplomats of counterparts overseas — including foreign heads of state.

Image: Public domain.

Somebody’s halo got tarnished and didn’t like it, not one bit. You know who else’s nose got out of joint?  The Deep State’s traditional allies in the fake news, er, propaganda press, er, legacy media.  As Sundance at The Conservative Treehouse has amply demonstrated over the years, when the FBI wants to shape a story or get ahead of something, they use The New York Times. The CIA? The Washington Post, and oh my, you can practically hear the sniffing and huffing when reliable intel stooges Devlin Barrett and Ellen Nakashima (think Thurston Howell and Lovey) wrote this in their article last night:

Assange was hardly an example of the traditional press. WikiLeaks’ Afghan War Logs disclosures were published with little vetting, for instance, to obscure the names of Afghan civilians who had provided information to the U.S. military — an omission that dismayed human rights groups.

“Little vetting” = “Washing” intel like the agencies want their laundry done.  You honestly have to wonder what’s in it for these “reporters” to spin for the people with whom they’re supposed to have an adversarial relationship.  I’m old enough to remember when actual reporters loved raw, unfiltered information from deep inside government agencies. Heck, I remember this very paper, The Washington Post, making some hay with it in the 1970s… let’s see… what was that?  Oh, it will come to me. Something about a gate… and a throat… it was deep.

Anyway! When a “reporter” sneers and sniffs at deep tells from within the government rather than grabbing them with both hands and running with them, that’s how you know “journalism” under someone’s banner is dying, and darkness has clearly fallen at The Washington Post.

Here’s hoping Mr. Assange stays safe, and, when he gets back to work, starts deep-telling on the rancid, rotten, corrupt pile of press we have in this country next.  Let’s see some fake news dirty laundry, Julian.  Make it your next Wikileak.