Written by Rick Ruffin   

While the mass media appears to be an enthusiastic supporter of the uprisings taking place across North Africa and into the Middle East to Central Asia, they show little, if any, support for the fight for freedom currently taking place in America and Europe.

In recent news coverage CNN’s Atika Shubert could barely conceal her glee. She was trying not to giggle as she told us that Wikileaks has recently taken to selling T-shirts and baseball caps online to raise money for its legal battles. Perhaps Ms Shubert has been secretly holding a grudge since Mr. Assange walked out of a CNN interview, after warning Ms. Shubert not to delve into personal matters.

But let’s move beyond the musings of one disgruntled CNN journalist for the moment.

Although the good folks at CNN and Fox News are doubtless jumping with joy at the prospect of a bankrupt whistleblower, this news is more significant for another matter. It is reflective of the state of fear the US government has succeeded in instilling across large segments of the US populace, and even, throughout the world. As constitutional law specialist and attorney Glenn Greenwald admitted in a recent interview with Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman, people no longer feel safe giving money to Wikileaks. They are afraid that if they do so they’ll be put on some sort of “terror watch list,” he said.

One need only look beyond the icy North Atlantic to tiny Iceland, where the long tentacle of “US justice” has recently slimed ashore. US authorities have subpoenaed social networking site Twitter for the private correspondence of Icelandic Parliamentarian Birgitta Jonsdottir, in a crackdown that Mr. Greenwald calls “the campaign to target Wikileaks supporters.” While this story was splashed all over the alternative news media, the mainstream media have been strangely silent on this issue.

The fact of the matter is that the US government is going all out to subpoena internet, telecommunications and social networking sites throughout the world to disclose the private correspondence of their clients. They are hoping to find the dirt needed to sully the reputations of hundreds of individuals who have had the audacity to exercise free speech. How dare anyone think of exercising such a thing as free speech in these days of the “war on terror.”

But while American citizens live in fear of government raids and intrusion, the cameras of the mass media are pointed toward the Middle East and the Arab world.

A simple browsing of the headlines of any number of alternative internet news services will come up with a plethora of attempts by the US to spy on its citizens. There was the case of the Arab American who found a tracking device underneath his car. When he posted a picture of it on the Internet a couple of FBI agents came knocking at his front door, demanding their property back.

Confiscation of laptops, cell phones and cameras by airport authorities is an ever increasing concern for travelers returning from abroad. So is the prospect of the FBI raiding your house in the wee hours of the morning, simply because you attended an anti-war rally or two.

It’s high time that CNN and its network of news anchors, reporters and journalists show the same zeal for the success of democracy in the US and other “democratic nations,” as they do for the success of democracy throughout the Arab world and the Middle East.