Crusade Against Fake News: Assange Urges MSM to Stop Giving Space to Charlatans

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange urged prominent Western media outlets on Tuesday to stop giving space to those who seek to deliberately publish "fake news."

The video titled "Fake News" shows various media reports claiming that WikiLeaks had ties to Russian intelligence.

On January 6, the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a report saying the US intelligence community had a high degree of confidence in the fact that Russia meddled in the 2016 US presidential election but did not offer any evidence to support their claims. The US intelligence community claimed that Russian hackers had handed over the information from the hacked Democratic Party to WikiLeaks.

Moscow has denied interfering in the US election, and having any secret ties to US President Donald Trump and his team. Trump has also rejected claims of undercover dealings with Russia.

In late 2016, WikiLeaks published emails that were allegedly taken from the hacked account of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta. Assange then said that, contrary to Clinton's claims, the Russian government was not the source of those publications.