The World Tomorrow: WikiLeaks Julian Assange Launching New Television Interview Program

After 500 days under house arrest in Britain, and the WikiLeaks website no longer a media outlet for groundbreaking political revelations sourced from whistleblowers, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has now set his sights on a more traditional medium — television.

Assange's new interview program debuting April 17, 2012, The World Tomorrow, will consist of a dozen half-hour episodes, initially broadcasting weekly on the Russian state-funded English-language satellite news channel, RT.

A WikiLeaks press release states, "'The World Tomorrow' is a collection of twelve interviews featuring an eclectic range of guests, who are stamping their mark on the future: politicians, revolutionaries, intellectuals, artists and visionaries. The world’s last five years have been marked by an unrelenting series of economic crises and political upheavals. But they have also given rise to the eruption of revolutionary ferment in the Middle East and to the emergence of new protest movements in the Euro-American world. In Julian's words, the aim of the show is 'to capture and present some of this revolutionary spirit to a global audience.'"

In the trailer for the show, Assange introduces the new venture saying "Today we’re on a quest for revolutionary ideas that can change the world tomorrow."

The following trailer for the program was uploaded to YouTube by Russia Today, April 13, 2012:

Muriel Kane writing at RawStory notes that:

The guest list has not been revealed, but it has been hinted that the first guest will be someone controversial. A tweet from the WikiLeaks account asks provocatively, "Any bets on who The World Tomorrow’s first mystery guest(s) are?" It then adds the hashtag "#ExpectAssange" — a play on the Anonymous slogan, "Expect us."

RT — formerly known as Russia Today — has been accused at times of being merely a Russian propaganda vehicle. A press release for the show, however, emphasizes that it was put together by an independent UK producer and that RT is merely serving as the initial broadcaster. Negotiations are presently underway with other possible licensees, who might broadcast longer versions of the same interviews.