This week marks 50 years since the publication in the New York Times of the Pentagon Papers, which played a significant role in galvanizing popular opposition to the Vietnam War. The manner in which the Times itself chose to commemorate the anniversary provides a case study in the profound shift to the right by the media and the entire political establishment in the intervening five decades. Nowhere is this shift expressed more nakedly than in the newspaper’s stony silence on the case of the imprisoned WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange, whose persecution by the US and British governments pose the issue of basic democratic rights to free speech and a free press even more sharply than the events of 50 years ago.
— source wsws.org | 15 Jun 2021