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Comment by Deukhoofd | Hacker News Reader

Here: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-54060427

Very limited what they reported on to be sure. AP News has more in depth reporting: https://apnews.com/hub/julian-assange

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It's fairly typical for the BBC to hold fire until the trial concludes and the legal restrictions around reporting are lifted.

I'm not sure I see the AP as having more "in depth" reporting, it just has a greater quantity of rolling reporting. Stories like "court case pauses for Covid alarm", "court case resumes", "Assange told to stop interrupting witnesses", "lawyer says Assange could be in prison for a long time" are not, let's be honest, adding to the total sum of understanding around the topic.

Why are you ignoring “Assange lawyer says Trump offered deal to avoid extradition” and “Lawyer says Assange charged under broad, contentious US law”. Not really sure what your definition of depth is by which these add less depth than the BBC’s literally zero coverage in the last two weeks.

> It's fairly typical for the BBC to hold fire until the trial concludes and the legal restrictions around reporting are lifted.

Simply not true, look at the coverage for the Johnny Depp libel trial on the BBC site, dozens of articles following the case day-by-day. The fact is they have become a celebrity news channel and don't want to rock the boat.

> Simply not true, look at the coverage for the Johnny Depp libel trial

Are the legal and practical issues on a civil trial like that really identical to a criminal trial or criminal extradition?

The post above was in response to a post that claimed the BBC tends not to post regarding a “trial”, and showed a counter-example. Shows that it is not as simple as the original poster suggests but not very clear exactly what criteria the BBC are using.

They are not identical but do not preclude extensive reporting as is demonstrated by Craig Murray who single-handed has put the BBC to shame

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/

Wow so it sounds like the BBC hasn't attended the hearing at all and is just reporting what is on the court docket.

Since the report has direct quotes from Assange's QC inside the court and from supporters outside of the court, that seems an odd assessment.

It's consistent with the BBC acting as a propaganda arm of the British state - something that had become more true ever since the Hutton enquiry and the raft of new political appointees at the head of the organization.

And yet you'll find that twitter only marks Russian and Chinese accounts as "state media".

I guess you can’t mark something they didn’t report as fake or misleading.

Sounds a lot like wikileaks itself ;)

To be fair, the name of the state is in BBC itself.

Twitter's been fairly open about their decisionmaking process here, so we know that's not the relevant factor - they say they don't label BBC because it has editorial independence.

Sounds hand-wavy. How is editorial independence measured?

I agree with your skepticism of the objectivity here. Twitter says only that they "consulted with a number of expert groups": https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/product/2020/new-label...

Twitter is wrong then. They used to have editorial independence before the Hutton enquiry.

Any editorial independence they have now is purely nominal.

And this is the issue with social media being able to moderate and curate content as they choose.

Makes me wonder about Mccain and the CDA.

> To be fair, the name of the state is in BBC itself.

As opposed to RT ?

Last time I was in the U.S. I watched Good Morning America on the American Broadcasting Company network

No, it's consistent with news sources in the UK having to obey the law about reporting restrictions on cases currently before the courts.

https://www.pinsentmasons.com/out-law/guides/the-sub-judice-...

> Matters are considered to be sub judice (Latin for 'under judgment') once legal proceedings become active.

> Criminal proceedings are deemed active once a person is arrested, a warrant for arrest has been issued, a summons has been issued or a person has been charged and remain active until conviction. Civil proceedings become active, in England, when the hearing date for the trial is arranged and, in Scotland, when the parties' pleadings have been finalised and the record is closed.

> Publication of material which is sub judice comprises contempt of court, a crime which is punishable by a fine of unlimited amount and/or imprisonment for up to two years. Third party costs orders may also be awarded against the media organisation, enabling the courts to recover the costs of any trial aborted as a result of the prejudicial reporting.

Dear lord.

Zero articles in the past two weeks. If you've been following the case at all, there's been a Hell of a lot to report, from Amnesty and EU ministers despairing at having their monitor access revoked at the last minute, to Khaled El Masri's absolutely jaw-dropping testimony [1].

They have a front page post right now about "concern" over a "fan invasion" of the pitch in a GAA game (Gaelic Athletics Association). And another about some celeb confirmed to be on the next "Dancing with the Stars".

If anyone reading this is the type to blame people for being uninformed, please take this into account.

[1] https://shadowproof.com/2020/09/18/khaled-el-masri-stands-up...

Holy shit. They sodomized him. They abducted, tortured and raped him. And Assange is going to jail for life because he offered to help crack a password. What a farce.

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