Julian Assange talks panama papers in an exclusive interview with the listening post

Airs on Al Jazeera English on Saturday 9th April

London, Friday 8th April 2016 With one story dominating headlines across the media this week, The Listening Post went to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for an exclusive interview with WikiLeaks co-founder and editor-in-chief, Julian Assange.

In a far-reaching discussion with The Listening Post’s Richard Gizbert, Assange criticizes the reporting so far, explores the opportunities and limitations of multi-newsroom collaborations as well as giving us his take on the ethics of journalists holding back information in an era of large-scale digital leaks.

The WikiLeaks co-founder hits out at the one-dimensional focus of the first wave of coverage from the leaked data: There was clearly a conscious effort to go with the Putin bashing, North Korea bashing, sanctions bashing etc. I didn’t think that was necessary for that story.

For Assange, the role of gatekeeper is one that journalists need to justify with greater transparency: what I want to hear is that there is a path, a transparent path to publishing the vast majority of that data set because that’s what’s interesting from a legal perspective, from a historical perspective. 

The interview with Julian Assange forms part of a special Listening Post programme which analyses the coverage of the Panama Papers from multiple angles. As news broke on Sunday, a Listening Post crew gained exclusive access to the offices of The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists to track the unfolding story as it went live. 

The full interview will be shown in this week’s Listening Post on Al Jazeera English on Saturday 9th April 0830 and 1930 GMT; Sunday at 0230GMT and Monday at 0330GMT and will be available online at http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/listeningpost/

link to interview clip:
https://www.facebook.com/AJListeningPost/videos/vb.18568599015/10153612512944016/?type=2&theater