The Berliner Zeitung has had an interesting interview with Nils Melzer, who was the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture, and who was fired for his assessment of the confinement of Assange as torture. He is also stating that the whole case is about setting a deterring example.

https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/wochenende/interview-un-sond...

also see this coverage:

https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/politik-gesellschaft/julian-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nils_Melzer#Assessment_on_the_...

Interesting that the BZ used to be a little bit more liberal than the mainstream press, even back when it was published in East Germany under Socialism ;-)

Do you have a source for him being fired? Wikipedia doesn't mention Melzer being fired and Google searches for him being fired don't produce any hits.

quote from the linked interview (my translation followed by the original)

Q: Your job was to reveal cases of torture and mistreatment by states. Do governments exert a lot of pressure?

A: I have been always in respect of all of the regulations, and I have to admit that I could always proceed freely with my work. However one is risking his carreer, if one is stepping to much on the feet of the permanent members of the UN security council. I was told informally, that I would have to pay a political price, but I am accepting this (reality).

Original:

Ihre Aufgabe ist das Aufdecken von Folterungen und Misshandlungen durch Staaten. Gibt es da nicht viel Druck von den Regierungen?

Ich habe immer darauf geachtet, dass ich nach den Vorschriften handle. Und ich kann sagen, dass ich meine Arbeit wirklich frei machen konnte. Allerdings riskiert man schon seine Karriere, wenn man den permanenten Mitgliedern des UN-Sicherheitsrats allzu sehr auf die Füße steigt. Man hat mir informell mitgeteilt, dass ich einen politischen Preis zu bezahlen haben werde. Aber das nehme ich in Kauf.

That doesn't say he got fired. But why let facts get in the way of a good story.

There are several ways to get fired, in my book this qualifies as one of them. In addition to that he had his funding slashed by various governments, in addition to having received these 'hints',

Not that surprising. The German mainstream news landscape is dominated by transatlantic interests.

Pretty much all German politicians, and journalists, of "relevance" are members in some pro-US NGO [0] or another, often even several of them.

Der Spiegel used to be one of thew few wider reaching left-leaning exceptions, they even published Snowden's first interview internationally back in 2013.

But over the years they went trough a slow transformation; They've become noticeably less critical of the US, completely ignoring any further developments around Snowden or Assagne, while ramping up on anti-Russian news.

Why is nobody there reaching out to people like Nils Melzer, as Swiss Republik.ch did? [1]

If Der Spiegel would have published something like that, it would have reached a far wider audience, could maybe even made some actual waves.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantik-Br%C3%BCcke

[1] https://www.republik.ch/2020/01/31/nils-melzer-about-wikilea...

> German press stays silent on this, again

It’s not pertinent. The journalistic draw of a years-old case and judicial mechanics. Everyone has a pet agenda that seems irresponsibly ignored by the media and the public. Procedural developments are rarely big news.

They thought Navalny's 45th birthday was news.

They'd probably have thought a key witness who turned out to be a liar and a rapist of underage boys who was given immunity was a little bit newsworthy if it happened during the trial to, say, lock Navalny up.

Just not when it's Assange, I suppose.

Sometimes media outlets have an agenda.

> Sometimes media outlets have an agenda.

No. They always have an agenda. And that agenda, overwhelmingly, is pro status quo. Not left, not right, not up or down. Just "things are basically OK except for a few problems here and there which we'll tell you about, though not in much depth".

Looking at the media, it's hard to agree with your claim that it's pro status quo. See any incendiary topic where the media can take opposing sides. Surely two diametrically opposed opinions can't be status quo biased.

Chomsky once said that the way to keep a population passive and obedient was to place strict limits on the range of acceptable debate but encourage very lively debate within that range.

Just focusing on Assange alone, it's not pertinent, sure. But Assange (and wikileaks, and anything behind it) in this (my?) frame of reference is not an individual, but serves as a pars pro toto for the freedom of press and the judicial system as a whole.

To me, the coverage he gets in the far-reaching magazines is a little bit underrepresented, to stay polite. This includes U.S. press, UK press and german press.

The world's most powerful country that constantly trumpets freedom and free speech, and regularly trashes China and other places for lack of press freedoms locks up a journalist for exposing US corruption.

This is hugely important and not a pet agenda.

DW was the most mainstream coverage I saw: https://www.dw.com/de/hoffnungsschimmer-f%C3%BCr-julian-assa...

Yes, DW is among the few who mostly report fairly. On the other hand, DW in germany is almost non-existent for ~95% of the populace.

I still don't really get what the point of DW is. German news for non-german speakers? But they also have German-language content?

German-perspective news for an international audience (including Germans living elsewhere) about international topics in a large number of languages. Or, to quote the law creating it, its programs

> [...] should provide a forum for German and other perspectives on important topics, predominantly in politics, culture and economy, both in Europe and in other continents, with the aim to foster understanding and exchange between cultures and people. While doing so, it especially supports the German language. (my off-the-cuff translation, but should capture the gist of it I hope)

It's the German state broadcasting agency producing content in many languages for Germans abroad and an international audience. For anti-propaganda reasons they are not allowed to broadcast in Germany. This is in contrast with the German public broadcasting agencies which have a compulsory fee, but are not directly paid by the state. DW have some really good and interesting reporting off the mainstream but should be consumed with care as they are effectively controlled by the German state. Recently they are set to become a sort of counter to Russia Today meant to counter fake news. A friend of mine works at DW and frequently rants about higher-ups revising or canceling reporting because it doesn't fit the desired angle.

I've been disappointed with DW for a long time. One of their ostensible goals is to promote the German language (see the Deutsche Welle Act, which governs it). Finding a live stream in German on their site is near impossible. I expect it's due to agreements with US cable companies, but I haven't been able to confirm that. I can't think of another reason for them to display "Es gab ein Problem Zugang zu dem geschützten Inhalt herzustellen" whenever I attempt to view live German content. Fortunately, some of it is available on YouTube.

For future reference, I did confirm from a support person that live streams are not offered in the US "due to legal reasons". You can only receive it through select cable, satellite, and other operators. Sad.