"Publishing evidence of state crimes, as Assange’s Wikileaks organisation has done, is covered by both free speech and public interest defences. Publishing evidence furnished by whistleblowers is at the heart of any journalism that aspires to hold power to account and in check".<p>Damn right. The treatment of Assange has dealt a terrible blow to the possibility of exposing criminal doings in the military, corporations, political parties, whatever. It sets the example that whistleblowers will not be protected.<p>So how did we end up here? Maybe many reasons but primarily I think maybe the Assange case is indicative of what might happen if you enter into the business of exposing corruption, and not restrict your exposures to one direction only. It will by necessity alienate any powerful interests that might protect you.<p>As it stands, only principled people side with Assange, people who insist that core democratic principles should trump the shortsighted interests of the state. Such people are few and far between nowadays, but are normally thought to be populating the courts, at least at higher levels, which is the last straw we can cling to.<p>But with a partisan press that has turned their backs on Assange there is hardly any pressure on the courts to do the right thing.
> That is why journalism is protected in the US by the First Amendment. Jettison that and one can no longer claim to live in a free society... US officials initially pretended that they were not seeking to prosecute the Wikileaks founder for journalism – in fact, they denied he was a journalist.<p>Uhh. This article obsesses slightly about Journalist vs Not but they aren’t a class that gets special protection under the US Constitution. There is no category of privilege or freedom based on that status and they are not registered by any central authority that authorizes the benefits of its protection. The First Amendment protects any jerk with an opinion and a printing press, in the style of Thomas Paine, and any collaborators.<p>Legally, the question of whether Assange is a journalist is basically immaterial.
Journalists have always had a higher status in the west because of their function in a democratic country. Assange proves that there is little in the way to prosecute journalists, even in the west. lives are risked everyday in countries like China to show the world what is going on behind all the propoganda. Yet today, Assange is locked away while the media has chosen to be the silent wingmen of the dictatorship that is the militairy-industrial complex.
Remember when CNN said that trump retweeting a gif of a pro wrestling match with the CNN logo photoshopped into it was a threat to journalists, and then when the US was trying to prosecute a journalist who committed no crimes on US soil, they said nothing?
I think perhaps I'm missing something in this whole fiasco. Many of the comments here read as if he's only charged with exercising free speech.<p>Has someone actually read the charges to see what Assange is accused of? Surely it's something more than "publishing secret documents." Are they accusing him of exercising free speech, or accusing him of actual crimes?
Because people do not care for privacy and freedom of press/freedom of speech, Assange will be prosecuted, sentenced and our liberties from that day hence forth curtailed.<p>Freedom of speech and privacy will be viewed as an act of sedition
For those interested, this interview with Nils Melzer, UN special rapporteur on torture is very illuminating:<p><a href="https://www.republik.ch/2020/01/31/nils-melzer-about-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange" rel="nofollow">https://www.republik.ch/2020/01/31/nils-melzer-about-wikilea...</a>
There is a difference between producing reporting on the basis of a whistleblower of conscience, and conspiring to exfiltrate a top secret data dump in the hope of finding some embarrassing details to publish.
> My dictionary defines “espionage” as “the practice of spying or of using spies, typically by governments to obtain political and military information”. A spy is defined as someone who “secretly obtains information on an enemy or competitor”.<p>Im glad this blog acquitted Assange of spying based on technicalities in his dictionary's definition of espionage. I think Assange did a great thing for the world, but it also sounds like he actively facilitated spying
> Gauntlet thrown down
The corporate media in the US and UK is no more diverse and pluralistic than the major corporate-funded political parties they identify with. This kind of media mirrors the same flaws as the Republican and Democratic parties in the US: they cheerlead consumption-based, globalised capitalism; they favour a policy of unsustainable, infinite growth on a finite planet; and they invariably support colonial, profit-driven, resource-grabbing wars, nowadays often dressed up as humanitarian intervention. The corporate media and the corporate political parties serve the interests of the same power establishment because they are equally embedded in that establishment.<p>And this is exactly the problem right there: corporate media isn’t really doing journalism!
The left wing media disavowed Assange and labeled him a Russian asset when Wikileaks published the DNC and Podesta emails. They painted themselves into a corner on this, so their best option is to ignore it at this point.<p>Also, while I despise the fact that the Trump administration is doing this, let’s not forget that the Obama and Bush administration oversaw a mass surveillance program and the Obama administration threatened Snowden’s life and painted him as a Russian asset. We have been building towards authoritarianism for 1-2 decades now.