Stephen Colbert Gets Serious with WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange

Last night Stephen Colbert interviewed Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, which the other week published video of the US military killing 12 individuals in Iraq, two of whom were later revealed to be staff members of the Reuters.

After a sort of jokey opening in which he had his face pixelated and voice altered, Colbert got down to business:

Let’s talk about this footage that has gotten you so much attention recently. This is footage of an Apache helicopter attack in 2007. The army described this as a group that gave resistance at the time, that doesn’t seem to be happening. But there are armed men in the group, they did find a rocket propelled grenade among the group, the Reuters photographers who were regrettably killed, were not identified…You have edited this tape, and you have given it a title called ‘collateral murder.’ That’s not leaking, that’s a pure editorial.

That’s not satire: That’s serious journalism. Assange, meanwhile, did not appear to be at all put off by the tone of the questions, admitting that the point of the video — including the editing and the title — was to gain as much political impact as possible.

Read more analysis of the interview at Mediaite.