Bradley Manning: Truth on trial?

This week, a special edition of the Listening Post with a special report on Bradley Manning and an exclusive interview with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange from inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

We start in a military courtroom in Fort Meade, Maryland, US where some of the media are covering the trial of private Bradley Manning – the source, according to his own testimony in February – of hundreds of thousands of confidential US documents released by Wikileaks in 2010.

Although US media outlets appear more interested in the case than during the pre-trial, the reporting is scant, because for every five accreditation requests made by journalists and interested parties, the Pentagon turned down four of them.

This trial is worth watching because of the implications for whistleblowers and the US journalistic organisations that rely on government insiders, so that Americans know what the government is doing in their name.

The case also has ramifications for Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency contractor and source of the recent Guardian stories on US intelligence agencies and their surveillance capabilities, that may well extend to the phone records of just about every American, as well as their online correspondence. Snowden is already undergoing the same kind of trial by media that Manning received before getting to court.

The Listening Post dissects this story with Alexa O’Brien, a freelance journalist; James Goodale, a first amendment lawyer; Suzanne Nossel, the executive director of the Pan American Centre; and Chase Madar, the author of The Passion of Bradley Manning.

In the second half of the programme, we sit down with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, whose own legal status in the US may well be affected by what happens at the Manning court martial. We hope you enjoy the show.

Listening Post can be seen each week at the following times GMT: Saturday: 0830, 1930; Sunday: 1430; Monday: 0430. Click here for more Listening Post.