I may have already posted this. I read it, but don't remember if I posted
it.
Miriam
COMMITTEE TO PROTECT JOURNALISTS EXCLUDES ASSANGE FROM JAILED JOURNALIST
INDEX
By Kevin Gosztola,
The Dissenter
December 26, 2021
Above Photo: Committee to Protect Journalists executive director Joel Simon.
Screen shot from CPJ promo video on YouTube.
A record number of journalists are imprisoned throughout the world,
according to the annual prison index released by the Committee to Protect
Journalists (CPJ).
But that number excludes WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
CPJ, which is based in New York, opposes the United States Justice
Department's prosecution against Assange. However, for the third year, the
press freedom organization declined to classify him as a jailed journalist.
In the organization's press release on the 2021 index, it states, "No
journalists were jailed in North America at the time of the census
deadline." That may be true, but it obscures what the U.S. government is
doing to keep a journalist detained in the United Kingdom.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF), based in Paris, previously joined with CPJ
on press freedom campaigns. They also keep an annual tally of journalists in
detention, yet unlike CPJ, RSF included Assange in their 2021 round-up.
"Held in London's Belmarsh maximum-security prison since April 2019, the
U.S. government continues to pursue Assange's extradition on the basis of 18
charges connected with Wikileaks' publication in 2010 of hundreds of
thousands of leaked classified documents revealing war crimes and human
rights violations that have never been prosecuted," RSF acknowledged.
Assange is listed among other examples of detained journalists, including
Zhang Zhan, Raman Pratasevich, and Pham Doan Trang.
CPJ was asked for comment on the continued exclusion of Assange from their
annual index, and a press person replied, "CPJ has [previously] explained
the reason for Mr. Assange's absence from this particular list"-linking to a
2019 post on their website.
Seventeen charges under the Espionage Act were announced by the Justice
Department in May 2019. One computer crime charge was announced in April
2019 as well-the same month Assange was expelled from the Ecuador embassy,
arrested by British authorities, and detained at Belmarsh.
When Assange was first omitted from CPJ's annual index in 2019, the
organization referred reporters with questions to their methodology.
"CPJ defines journalists as people who cover news or comment on public
affairs through any media-including in print, in photographs, on radio, on
television, and online. We take up cases involving staff journalists,
freelancers, stringers, bloggers, and citizen journalists."
Robert Mahoney, CPJ's deputy executive director, wrote a post in defense of
the decision to exclude Assange.
"After extensive research and consideration, CPJ chose not to list Assange
as a journalist, in part because his role has just as often been as a source
and because WikiLeaks does not generally perform as a news outlet with an
editorial process," Mahoney argued.
Yet Assange is not a source. He did not work for any of the agencies, where
employees or contractors had access to the materials. U.S. Army
whistleblower Chelsea Manning was the source.
John Goetz, who worked for German newspaper Der Spiegel when it partnered
with WikiLeaks on the Afghanistan War Logs, submitted testimony for
Assange's defense during his extradition hearing in September 2020. He
described "significant innovations in the field of investigative journalism"
that he observed.
"Many of us at Der Spiegel [had] long wanted to publish to publish online
documents, which proved the accuracy of our stories, yet before WikiLeaks,
that was uncommon. It was WikiLeaks that first initiated large journalistic
partnerships, something that is now almost common; for example, the ICIJ
partnership around the 'Panama Papers.'"
Goetz added, "At the time, the idea that major publications would work
together violated much of what I had learned. WikiLeaks pioneered the online
dropbox for submissions to newsrooms, which is now commonplace in media
around the world."
"The emphasis placed by WikiLeaks on secure communications in order to
protect its materials and journalistic sources, which back in 2010 was
unheard of, has since become the norm amongst investigative journalists."
Clearly Assange and WikiLeaks had an editorial process for the documents at
issue in this case. Unlike Mahoney, Goetz does not conflate the editorial
process with the reporting process.
Mark Feldstein, a former CNN and ABC News correspondent who testified at the
same extradition hearing, said, "Assange has engaged in the essence of
journalism: gathering and publishing newsworthy information and documents
for the public."
Former New York Times general counsel James Goodale represented the Times
when they published the Pentagon Papers. He is also a senior adviser to CPJ.
In his 2013 book, Fighting For the Press, Goodale wrote, "It should be clear
Assange is carrying out the digital equivalent of editing and gathering news
in the digital age."
"Assange sought out secret information by setting up a private website for
the anonymous transmission of information to him," according to Goodale.
"Journalists asking sources to reveal secrets is the essence of journalism.
The only thing that has changed is that online chats and a digital
submission system have replaced meeting over a cup of coffee and a P.O.
Box."
CPJ executive director Joel Simon has insisted for more than a decade that
it is irrelevant whether Assange is a journalist. In fact, he believes that
question is not "ultimately resolvable."
"WikiLeaks has tried to suggest that it functions as a journalistic entity,"
Simon wrote in his book, The New Censorship, which was published in 2015.
"I'm skeptical. WikiLeaks is best described as an anti-secrecy advocacy
group that uses journalistic strategies to advance its goals."
While Simon waffles on the matter, U.S. intelligence agencies, such as the
CIA, have had no trouble resolving the question in a manner that helps them
justify targeting Assange as a "malevolent foreign actor" or an "information
broker," who does not deserve press freedom protections.
The chair of CPJ's board of directors is Kathleen Carroll, who was the
executive editor of the Associated Press when WikiLeaks obtained documents
from Manning. AP objected to the terms of the arrangement offered by
WikiLeaks and chose not to work on the documents with WikiLeaks.
At the Nieman Conference on Secrecy and Journalism on December 16, 2010, a
little more than two weeks after the first diplomatic cables were published,
Carroll told an audience AP passed on partnering with WikiLeaks. The AP was
unwilling to grant WikiLeaks "control over where the documents were stored
and who in our organization had access to them."
Carroll also suggested, "Assange [was] an advocate, and those of you who are
journalists understand what it's like to deal with advocates. They're
advocating for a certain point of view."
"One of the challenges that the AP has sometimes is because we are a
U.S.-based organization-We're a global organization. We have a good chunk of
revenue and customers around the world and staff there, but we're very often
shorthanded as an American organization. And it's possible that Mr. Assange
thought that we were tainted by that in some way."
Asked if Assange informed AP of why they were denied access to the
documents, Carroll said he did not say. So what Carroll suggested was
entirely conjecture.
Jacob Weisberg, former editor-in-chief of Slate Group, is the vice chair of
CPJ's board of directors. He opposed Assange and WikiLeaks in 2015 when they
published emails from Sony Entertainment that were hacked. He published an
opinion article at Slate, which he oversaw, under the headline, "Stop
Publishing the Sony Hacks."
"News outlets should obviously cover the story of the hack itself, the
effect on Sony, the question of how it happened, and who's responsible. This
is a big and legitimate news story," Weisberg declared. "But when it comes
to exploiting the fruits of the digital break-in, journalists should
voluntarily withhold publication."
"They shouldn't hold back because they're legally obligated to-I don't
believe they are-but because there's no ethical justification for publishing
this damaging stolen material."
Weisberg failed to disclose that he had ties to Sony Entertainment chief
executive Michael Lynton, and emails he sent were in the archive that
WikiLeaks published.
Washington Post columnist Erik Wemple contended Weisberg should have
included a disclosure. Weisberg denied the existence of any conflict of
interest and countered, "I continue to think that writing articles based on
these emails is a massive violation of privacy-now including mine-without
any compelling justification."
In November 2020, CPJ executive director Joel Simon outlined some of the
press freedom issues President Joe Biden needed to deal with after President
Donald Trump's administration fueled contempt for journalists. Remarkably,
it contained no mention of the prosecution of Assange.
For what it's worth, Assange has an International Federation of Journalists
(IFJ) press card. Since 2010, he also has been a member of the Media
Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), a trade union in Australia.
Every day that CPJ denies Assange a place in their jailed journalist index
dilutes their credibility, as well as the ability of their advocacy to
meaningfully contribute to an end to the U.S. government's concerted attack
on journalism.
