The investigative news magazine Consortium News reported it was “under attack on Monday” and there was a “malicious attempt to shut down the website.” Raising the alarm that this could be part of “a coordinated effort to smear Assange” and “silence those who counter such dubious reporting.”
Consortium News tweeted, “Our website is completely down. Our media host said we have been attacked by malware. They actually tried to blame ‘the Russians’! Every article published since 2011 now gets a 404 Not Found. They are working on it. Problem started slowly on Friday first day of CN Live!”
Consortium News reports there have been other attacks on independent media, and “censorship of activists who support independent journalists, including WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.”
The magazine cited, as an example of a possible broader coordinated attack, the Twitter suspension of the account, Unity4J, a major supporter of Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Consortium News reported, “The Unity4J Twitter account was suspended last Thursday for no known reason” and there has still been no public explanation for the suspension.
Consortium News reported the coincidence that “the same day that Consortium News fell under attack, CNN published a conspiracy-theory-laden article accusing Assange of having conspired with ‘the Russians’ to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”
Image: “Julian Assange Wikileaks named Man of the Year by Le Monde” by thierry ehrmann is licensed under CC BY 2.0