At a press conference recently, Whitehouse SPOX Karine Jean-Pierre (KJP) again deflected any comment about the imprisoned detainment of publisher/journalist Julian Assange when asked about him by a reporter in conjunction with a question about The Press Act, H.R. 4250, which was recently passed by Congress on January 22, 2024. The Press Act specifies to maintain the free flow of information to the public, by establishing appropriate limits on the federally compelled disclosure of information obtained as part of engaging in journalism, and for other purposes. The short description is the “Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying Act.” The term “covered journalist” mentioned in The Press Act means a person who regularly gathers, prepares, collects, photographs, records, writes, edits, reports, investigates, or publishes news or information that concerns local, national, or international events or other matters of public interest for dissemination to the public. The ACLU had this to say: “While the majority of states already have shield laws in place that protect journalists from compelled disclosure of their sources, the Press Act provides uniform protections to journalists across the country.”
The Press Act seems to be tailor-made to exonerate Julian Assange, the most award-winning journalist in the world, who has been detained in a UK high security prison for the last 5 years, while all attempts are made to win a second appeal. Julian won the first appeal, but then the US added more allegations, holding him in legal limbo while the UK High Court and the US Department of Justice bat the ball back and forth. SPOX KJP refused to comment, her words “journalism is not a crime” ringing hollow between the walls of the press room.
In order to be informed with the truth, and have some confidence that what we are being told is the truth, we need a truly free press that is not intimidated by a government threatening to imprison the entire world into not investigating or reporting government crimes. Our system was set up for the press to be free to investigate the inner workings of a government to promote governmental transparency, and with a clear understanding that governments exist to serve the people. News reporting was once a vocation with real integrity. As the fifth estate, reporters were known to be tenacious and were respected for their ability to be truthful. Sadly, public trust has diminished due to the MSM’s lack of courage and tendency to repeat government narratives.
If Julian Assange is the most award-winning journalist of our time, then why aren’t we hearing more positive things about him? Certainly someone who published information about U.S. war crimes, that brought wars to a complete end, would be heralded as a hero, right? Why have we only heard bad things about Assange in the media? Assange and WikiLeaks partnered with numerous major publications that published the same information at the same time, yet those publications were not prosecuted. The whole reason the Obama administration did not prosecute Assange was because it would have created a severe problem for The New York Times. If they went after Assange, they’d have to go after all the others too. The Trump Administration, however, namely Mike Pompeo, acting head of CIA at the time, as well as others targeted Assange and WikiLeaks, and made a plan to bring them to their demise. After this, the media, including his former partner news organizations savagely turned on Assange, despite having benefited so much from their collaboration.
If the precedent set by an Assange conviction endangers the very fabric of press freedoms, then why would the legacy media still be repeating false allegations saying Assange helped Chelsea Manning hack into U.S. computers or assisted with password cracking when the facts that those things never happened have long been established by the Chelsea Manning Trial. Mainstream Media keeps repeating it, ignoring the facts in evidence, just because the US government says it. This is a problem for our country and free speech, and is why we need to concern ourselves with making sure the free press can operate without fear or intimidation by any government.
Julian Assange is officially registered with the Department of Justice as a Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) journalist/publisher (Registration number 7370) to provide briefings about the litigation to parties interested in the litigation and participating in public educational events about the litigation. He is not a hardened criminal, nor some kind of terrorist looking for secrets to hack. On the contrary, he is a humanitarian, a fighter for peace and truth and transparency in order to fight ignorance and protect the vulnerable. Assange is a gifted prodigy, and like so many whose brains work differently, are not easily understood by society, because they don’t fit into customary categories of societal norms. He may have been a mischievous hacker in his younger days, who got caught and slapped on the hand, but then began putting his skills to use for the betterment of humanity. He founded Suburbia Public Access Network, one of Australia’s first internet service providers and gave it away for free to community groups and educated them on how to use it.
In the course of his early hacking exploits, Assange saw things that were happening in the shadows and their implications for the future and he became concerned. He noticed an increasing public indifference to the escalating authority of government and diminishing rights of the people. An indifference not merely out of a distracted self-absorption, but public ignorance created by a media that increasingly followed the government directives to craft and repeat narratives, rather than report truthfully based on research and investigative journalism. Some of the dark secrets he stumbled across compelled him to donate his considerable computer skills to Australian police to help them catch online child predators in the 1990s. He “assisted in relation to two investigations. His role was limited to providing technical advice and support [and] to assist in the prosecution of persons suspected of publishing and distributing child pornography on the internet. Mr Assange received no personal benefit from this contribution and was pleased to be in a position to assist.”
Following the WikiLeaks publication of the Collateral Murder video which showed the violent U.S. helicopter strike of unarmed civilians in Iraq including two Reuters journalists, all eyes went to the United States. Soon after, helicopter and drone strikes stopped and the war in Iraq ended. Another way Assange’s work helped the world was when the diplomatic cables were published by WikiLeaks and others, revealing that two subcontractors hired by the U.S. were caught paying for local child “dancing boys” to come in and entertain the men. The Afghan Interior Minister was panicking over the exposure of the story and soon resigned, followed by the enforcement of tighter restrictions and oversight.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/dec/02/foreign-contractors-hired-dancing-boys
Assange and Wikileaks were of service to Australians by publishing the secret draft of the massive Transpacific Partnership trade deal (TPP). The TPP was revealed to allow multi-national corporations to influence Australia’s control over their own pharmaceutical products and medical devices favoring them over Australian products. Having this information was very empowering for the people. The Australian public and organizations could then be able to challenge its threats to Australian sovereignty, legal rights, health care & the environment.
It is not unreasonable for transparency of government information made available for the public to lead to government accountability and allows the public to make changes in their government. It was not a welcome thing for governments, but was an empowering force for the people. WikiLeaks collaboration with hundreds of international media partners was a pioneering form of journalism. They published source documentation alongside their articles for public verification in large datasets. They were tough on censorship and believed in strong adversarial journalism to keep governments honest. The innovations Assange and WikiLeaks implemented formed a model that has been copied by media organizations all over the world. When governments become embarrassed that their reckless behavior is made public, what should happen is that the problems are addressed, and change occurs. It has become clear that the U.S. government needs this kind of intervention, because, as Whitehouse SPOX Karine Jean-Pierre stated, “journalism is not a crime.”