Assange Faces Extradition...

Intro: "The First Amendment speaks of “the press.It was crafted in a time when printers distributed controversial, often incendiary screeds against the governing class. The publishers of the post-colonial era were rogues and rabble-rousers who spoke—or, to be more precise, printed—unwelcome truths to power. They knew full well that their publications provoked outrage.

Last week, a court in the United Kingdom determined that Assange could be extradited to the United States to face prosecution by the Department of Justice for allegedly engaging in a hacking conspiracy with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to reveal classified information...The point of protecting press freedom has never been to privilege inoffensive speech, nor to establish a priestly class of journalists who are somehow deemed by the governing and economic elites to be acceptably employed.

The point is to defend the free flow of information that the powerful would prefer to keep secret but that the people have a right to know.

The Prosecution of Julian Assange Absolutely Threatens Freedom of the Press

The Biden administration should abandon a course that could lead to the criminalization of whistleblowers and investigative journalism.

By John Nichols Yesterday 5:00 am

The Nation

"The Constitution does not prohibit assaults on freedom of the press because the notoriously vain founders were fond of the printers, who in the first years of the Republic produced what President George Washington decried as “diabolical…outrages on common decency.”

Washington’s thin-skinned successor, John Adams, had one printer arrested for allegedly libeling the president “in a manner tending to excite sedition and opposition to the laws.” Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made it a crime to “write, print, utter or publish…malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States.” He then had one of his leading critics, Matthew Lyon, tried and jailed after the representative from Vermont derided the second president’s “ridiculous pomp.” Lyon, it was charged, was “a malicious and seditious person, and of a depraved mind and a wicked and diabolical disposition.” Thomas Jefferson, no stranger to scandal, was similarly uncharitable. He deplored “the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed and the malignity, the vulgarity, and mendacious spirit of those who write for them.”

In other words, the founders rebuked the print publishers of their day with language every bit as venomous as that employed by contemporary US officials when they speak of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks publisher whom the Biden administration proposes to try on espionage charges stemming from the 2010 publication of evidence of “Collateral Murder” atrocities committed by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan. . .                               

[...] If we are serious about protecting the right of those who are widely acknowledged as journalists to track down and publish classified information about what governments do in our name but without our informed consent, then we must defend the right of more controversial printers and web publishers to obtain and distribute the same.

That understanding is supposed to infuse the public discourse about press freedom in the United States. But it only rarely does. Too frequently, prominent political and media voices go silent—or, at least, soft—when real fights over the First Amendment are being fought. It’s particularly concerning that there isn’t a louder outcry now, from across the political spectrum, regarding the prosecution of Assange. . .It is not necessary to make Assange a hero in order to oppose his prosecution. But it is necessary to reject a project of successive presidential administrations that will—if seen through to its conclusion—set a precedent for prosecuting journalists and publishers. . ."

John Nichols, the author of this article published article yesterday wraps up his logical argument saying: " I share the view of Ben Wizner, the director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, who recently explained:

The prosecution of Julian Assange poses a grave threat to press freedom. Bringing criminal charges against a publisher for the publication of truthful information establishes a dangerous precedent that can be used to target all news organizations that hold the government accountable by publishing its secrets. Any prosecution by the United States of Mr. Assange would be unprecedented and unconstitutional, and would open the door to criminal investigations of other news organizations. The government needs to immediately drop its charges against him.

Those of us who believe in the need for a robust and genuinely free press must recognize that IFJ General Secretary Anthony Bellanger was right when he declared: “President Joe Biden must end the years of politically motivated prosecution of Julian Assange by finally dropping the charges against him. The criminalization of whistleblowers and investigative journalists has no place in a democracy.”

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