Freedom of Press

For John, BLUF:  Mr Julian Assange, who used to be a Press darling, and is now a pariah, is in danger of becoming a tool for destroying the "Freedom of the Press" guarantee in the First Amendment.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Julian Assange and the increasing threat to freedom of the press

Here is the sub-headline:

The continued persecution of Manning and Assange shows that while actual war criminals are showered with praise and given lucrative sinecures, those who reveal their crimes are the ones who will face punishment.

From Nation of Change, by Reporter Derek Royden, 7 June 2019.

Here is the lede plus three:

On April 11th, within hours of Julian Assange being taken into custody on charges of jumping bail in the U.K., the United States released an indictment calling for the Australian publisher to be extradited there to face trial on hacking charges related to the 2010 leaks that first brought him and Wikileaks to the world’s attention. The whistle-blower who provided those leaks, Chelsea Manning, has also been returned to jail indefinitely for the second time this year.

While the price to be paid by Assange if found guilty of this initial charge seemed relatively small (about five years maximum) and didn’t seem to infringe on the United States’ First Amendment protections, much of the press, at least in the U.S., U.K. and Canada, seemed almost gleeful as images of the disheveled, obviously psychologically distressed Wikileaks co-founder being pulled out of Ecuador’s London embassy by police were broadcast around the globe.

The Manning leaks, just short of three quarters of a million documents and other materials that revealed, among many other things, U.S. complicity in brutal torture by Iraqi authorities and the murder of dozens of innocent civilians at checkpoints during the war, are of vital historical importance. They not only revealed the carnage that was being wreaked in Iraq and Afghanistan but a separate cache showed a U.S. diplomatic corps drowning in cynicism and often dedicated to impeding social and political progress in other countries, especially in the Middle East and North Africa.

The Obama administration, perhaps in part to let what the 2010 leaks revealed lie, eventually decided after years of investigative work that Wikileaks and its publisher could not be prosecuted for making them public, especially considering the fact that many mainstream outlets, from the New York Times to the U.K. Guardian to Der Spiegal, vetted and published many of the same documents.

I have little sympathy for former soldier Chelsea Manning.  At the time he released his large number of documents his action went passed whistle blowing and into temper tantrum, a temper tantrum that risked people's lives.

But Julian Assange is a different matter.  He is a member of the Press.  Taking him down is putting an ax to the root of Press Freedom, to the root of New YorkTimes Co v United States, the landmark 1971 Freedom of the Press Supreme Court Decision.

Regards  —  Cliff