If most rockstars performed one of their iconic hits outside the British Home Office, the media would lap it up. Not so, if the star is Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters and he sings for jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Mainstream media completely ignored Waters’ performance outside the British interior ministry office on Monday evening. A search of the ProQuest newspaper database found “nothing” from any UK newspaper on the event, media fairness website Media Lens tweeted.
A Google News search finds coverage from the World Socialist Web Site, the Irish Examiner, Ecuador-based Telesur, and some Turkish outlets, as well as RT and Sputnik – but nothing from any major British newspaper or broadcaster.
The event was heavily promoted on Twitter by WikiLeaks and Roger Waters himself – so it appears that the lack of coverage by UK media was a conscious decision rather than an oversight.
Also on rt.com WATCH Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters jam ‘Wish You Were Here’ at Assange demo outside UK Home OfficeThe silence did not go unnoticed by Assange supporters on social media.
“If Roger Waters were to open his guitar case and sing on any street corner in the world, this would be major cultural news on mainstream media,” one wrote.
Another tweeter cited the lack of coverage in the Guardian as “more evidence that it’s just a propaganda mouthpiece for British Intelligence.”
Labour’s Chris Williamson tweeted that he was the “only MP” in attendance at the demonstration, adding that the imprisonment of Assange was “an assault against freedom of speech and journalism.”
Independent Australian journalist Caitlin Johnstone called attention to how the media enthusiastically covered billionaire Richard Branson’s concert against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on the country’s border in February – because it fit with the correct mainstream narrative.
Waters himself slammed Branson’s ‘Venezuela Aid Live’ show at the time – and it later emerged that millions raised for “freedom and democracy” was guzzled up in Colombia by aides for US-backed coup leader Juan Guaido.
Also on rt.com ‘All of us are in danger’: John Pilger delivers a chilling warning from Julian AssangeAssange was jailed in April for violating UK bail conditions and fleeing into the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he spent seven years under asylum, fearing extradition for exposing US government secrets.
Waters was joined at Monday’s demonstration by award-winning journalist John Pilger, who after a recent visit to the maximum security Belmarsh Prison said that the whistleblower’s “psychological torture is unabated.”
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