Today I would like to talk about journalism.
(Words in quotations are Julian’s own words, from Julian Assange in his Own Words
compiled and eduted by Karen Sharpe, 2021)
We all get our news from somewhere. Do you ever wonder how factual it is? Or how complete?
What’s the purpose of journalism? How important is it, to a free society?
On the third of May, it was world press freedom day.
This celebrates press freedom and defends the media from attacks on their independence.
In honour of that event, President Biden spoke in his defence of an American journalist arrested in
Russia. The President said journalism is not a crime and no journalist – American or not – should
have to risk their lives and livelihoods in pursuit of the truth.
Journalism is not a crime.
Mr President, if journalism is not crime, why is Julian Assange in a UK high security prison?
Julian Assange is an Australian journalist
He’s a member of the International Federation of Journalists.
He used his clever Australian mind to invent new technology and new ways of doing journalism.
For that, he won multiple journalistic awards, here and internationally.
His publication, Wikileaks, reported facts about war crimes, civilian casualties in war, torture,
spying, blackmail, and corruption.
Not only about America, he revealed information from all over the world.
For Julian, the role of journalist is to publish full information, good and bad. He reckons “journalism
should be more like science. As far as possible, facts should be verifiable. If journalists want
long-term credibility for their profession, they have to go in that direction. Have more respect for us
readers.”
Julian believes that journalism is a way to transparency and justice. He poses a question as to “what
sort of information is important in the world, what sort of information can achieve reform. And
there’s a lot of information. Information that organisations are spending economic effort into
concealing, that’s a really good signal that when the information gets out, there’s a hope of it doing
some good, because the organizations that know it best, that know it from the inside out, are
spending work to conceal it.”
What is being hidden from us is what we need to hear about.
Journalism
gives a voice to whistleblowers, and
tells us when things aren’t right.
Journalism can improve society.
Here’s a story I read about the Iraq war. In 2006, tragically, a family of 10 people were killed by US
led troops. This was not explained, the details were concealed. In 2011, the Iraqi government found
out what really happened after Wikileaks reported it. As a result, they gave the US an ultimatum: If
you keep your troops here, we will no longer give them immunity from murder. President Obama
didn’t want US soldiers to face legal action so he withdraw the troops from Iraq.
(This incident was reported in detail by Kevin Gosztola in his book, Guilty of Journalism).
We could say that Julian’s publishing hastened the end of the Iraq war.
Pretty significant. Like Julian says: “peace can be started by truth.”
The US was embarrassed when Wikileaks uncovered secrets.
They want Julian to face 17 charges.
• The charges say it’s criminal to publish leaks from whistleblowers. But wait… journalists
do that every day, in the public interest.
• The charges say it’s a crime for Julian to try to help a whistleblower hide their identity. But
wait…journalists are ethically obliged to protect the identity of their sources.
The US seeks to sidestep these troubling ambiguities by saying he is not a journalist.
They call these charges espionage instead of journalism for 2 reasons:
1. they don’t want him to have the defense that he was acting in the public interest,
2. they want the power to say who is or isn’t a journalist.
Is it right for a government to pick and choose who is allowed to publish? I don’t know about you
but to me, that sounds more like authoritarianism than democracy.
Julian says: “If we’re talking about creating threats to small publishers to stop them publishing, the
US has lost its way. It has abrogated its founding traditions, it has thrown the First Amendement in
the bin, because publishers must be free to publish.”
It seems like President Biden agrees that publishers must be free to publish. Last week the President
said: A free press is a pillar, maybe THE pillar, of a free society, [and] not the enemy.
He then made a toast to truth over lies.
I’ll drink to that: Truth over lies.
Wikileaks is the only news outlet that can claim to have published 100% truth and never had to
retract a story. Wikileaks holds governments and corporations to account by reporting truth in the
public interest.
Should we allow governments to decide what news we can read?
Do Aussie journalists have less rights than American journalists?
They have already denied Julian his human rights.
Next they want to make an example of him, to frighten other publishers into silence.
They want to control what we are allowed to know.
In Julian’s words, “the US government, or rather, those regrettable elements in it, that hate truth,
liberty and justice, want to cheat their way into his extradition and death, rather than letting the
public hear the truth. Truth is ultimately all we have.”
FREE JULIAN ASSANGE