Oh you are right, I’m apparently talking about a 2014 leak from Russian sources which Assange thought was insignificant. It’s different from this one:
Apologies.
FWIW the Panama Papers were around 1500 times more data (space/size) than Cablegate. It wouldn’t make sense to release that data all at once.
I wonder if it was the same cops waiting outside the embassy doors for seven years?
“Is that him? Nup…
Ooh what about that…nup.
He’ll be out soon…”
Then one of them went for a p*ss just before Assange came out, and missed the whole thing.
At least he didn’t leave the embassy in 57 seperate pieces. That’s a positive.
Peter Greste, who is a journalist, is fairly critical of Assange in this morning’s Age. He says he’s not entitled to be considered a journalist because he doesn’t analyse to see what should be published. The New York Times and a number of other papers analysed the Panama Papers and published what was appropriate. Assange exposed Afghans who’d been helped to the coalition.
I’ll get hold of the article when i get a chance.
LOL at Trump’s new line of “I don’t know anything about WikiLeaks”… he used to very loudly proclaim them as heroes. We’ll see if his handlers can keep him quiet for more than a day on it.
TALKING POINT
PETER GRESTE
Standing before a media scrum in London, Julian Assange’s lawyer Jen Robinson declared that his arrest on Thursday ‘‘set a dangerous precedent for all media and journalists in Europe and around the world’’.
If his extradition were allowed, she said, any journalist could face charges for ‘‘publishing truthful information about the United States’’.
As someone who has been imprisoned by a foreign government for publishing material that it didn’t like, I have a certain sympathy with Assange. But my support stops there.
To be clear, Julian Assange is not a journalist, and Wikileaks is not a news organisation. There is an argument to be had about the libertarian ideal of radical transparency that underpins its ethos, but that is a separate issue altogether from press freedom.
In the American extradition request, WikiLeaks is accused of conspiring with the whistleblower Chelsea Manning to publish a huge trove of military documents in 2010. The documents included the infamous ‘‘collateral murder’’ video filmed from the gunsights of two US Apache helicopters as they opened fire on a group of men in Baghdad, including two Reuters journalists, killing them all.
Other documents included the Afghanistan War Logs, the Iraq War Logs, and ‘‘CableGate’’ – a trove of classified diplomatic cables that contained some embarrassingly undiplomatic analysis of world leaders and their countries. So far so newsworthy.
But Assange went further. Instead of sorting through the hundreds of thousands of files to seek out the most important or relevant and protect the innocent, he dumped them all onto his website, free for anybody to go through, regardless of their contents or the impact they might have had. Some exposed the names of Afghans who had been giving information on the Taliban to US forces.
Journalism demands more than simply acquiring confidential information and releasing it unfiltered onto the internet for punters to sort through. It comes with responsibility.
To effectively fulfil the role of journalism in a democracy, there is an obligation to seek out what is genuinely in the public interest and a responsibility to remove anything that may compromise the privacy of individuals not directly involved in a story or that might put them at risk. Journalism also requires detailed context and analysis to explain why the information is important, and what it all means.
When The Guardian and The New York Times got hold of the cache of files that Edward Snowden downloaded from the US National Security Agency in 2013, they spent months searching through it to pick out the documents that exposed the extent of the NSA’s surveillance operations. Then they took months more to release those stories in a cascade that was as explosive as it was impressive.
In 2015, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists got hold of more than 11 million documents leaked from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. But the ICIJ did not simply publish and be damned. Instead, it compiled a team of journalists from 107 news organisations across 80 countries, who then spent more than a year going through that vast trove. They dug out evidence that confirmed corruption, tax evasion and the evasion of international sanctions by some of the world’s most powerful business and political elites.
It was long, hard and expensive work, but it was also journalism at its finest, fulfilling its watchdog role by fearlessly holding the powerful to account and doing its best to protect the privacy of those who were doing nothing wrong.
Julian Assange did none of that, so he cannot claim to be a journalist or hide behind arguments in support of press freedom. The distinction matters because of the way the digital revolution has confused the definitions of what journalism is and its role in a democracy.
It has never been about opening up a hosepipe of information regardless of the consequences.
Peter Greste is a founding director and spokesman for the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom, and UNESCO chair in journalism and communication at the University of Queensland.
He is probably too busy buying another $20,000 book case with taxpayers’ money.
l agree that Assange is no journalist. I can’t recall him ever claiming to be one.
wont happen now as we have no government until after the election anything that will happen to him will happen before that just incase whoever wins protests his extradition to a foreign country. Timed it well bet it was always on the cards for now & apparently the US just loaded Equador a huge amount of money …timing is everything !!
His lawyers emphasise that he is a journalist - connected to the First Amendment of the US Constitution on freedom of the press. It is about his best defence. IIRC it may have been used by Daniel Ellsberg back in the Nixon days.
As to Greste’s definition of journalist, it is an ethical ideal, that would knock out most of the stuff we are exposed to in the MSM
On Greste, that is an absolute steaming pile of turd. I can’t believe I read such rubbish and it’s sad to see he legitimately believes what he just wrote (or said). The question “is Assange a journalist”, as though it’s a credentialed, licensed status like being a doctor or lawyer, is deceitful and he knows it. The press freedoms he speaks about protects an activity available to everyone, not some designated club he and others feel they belong to.
Anyone with a functioning brain can see that Assange is a journalist. Publishing facts so that the people can inform themselves about what’s going on in their world and their government is precisely what journalism is ffs. The whole point of press freedoms is so we, the people can be informed but this idiot will have us think that they only extend to people who work for the NYT or WaPo ffs. The fact that Assange does it differently and undeniably better (which is why so many ‘journalists’ barely defend him) doesn’t change that fact.
The claim that Assange “isn’t a journalist” is an irrelevant red herring and made by people with an interest in maintaining a small and specific linguistic understanding of what the word means.
You’re ok with him releasing human source information that puts their lives at risk for aiding/providing information to the US and its allies?
We still have a government, just that under caretaker conventions, there should not be new policy implementation, depending on events ( e.g international or domestic emergency)
I would not put any reaction to Assange’s extradition as new policy. It can be given effect within existing parameters, neutralised as an election issue if there is bipartisan support.
Yes I think Wikileaks has at times been irresponsible but that doesn’t take away from the fact that they are performing the very function of journalism. Greste is being completely disingenuous.
His claim that Assange shouldn’t enjoy the benefits of press freedoms is scandalous.
RE: endangering lives - I have yet to see a credible piece of evidence which has tied individuals having their lives endangered or have been killed due to Wikileaks disclosures. In fact, the video Collateral Murder forced the U.S OUT of Iraq for a while which more than likely saved thousands of lives.
I know the US intelligence apparatus worked overtime to protect the sources when the info hit. Many still talk about it. There was also the issue of sourcing drying up because they feared their names being made public.
He has an impressive list of journalism awards for somebody who is ‘not a journalist.’
Caroline Wilson won a Walkley, as did McKenzie, who doctored evidence. Journalism awards are often highly political and have no bearing on the quality of the journalist - can be their contribution to selling the papers.
Assange might come within the definition of a journalist, does not mean he is a quality journalist.
I realise all that.
But one thing that journalism awards are useful for is identifying that you are, indeed, a journalist.
It’s a handy argument at the very least.
I tend to side with Greste on this one. Assange is more digital hacker than a journo who builds a story. He has absolutely jeopardised people’s lives and combat operations with his disclosures, with apparently zero qualms. And I suspect that he’s a paid gun for hire rather than an altruistic writer/journo/editor. The Clinton email hacks came from Russian sources for a reason.
But whatever, it’s a non defined profession anyway and just my opinion. Most journo’s ignore their own codes of behaviours when they deem necessary , as we saw clearly during the Saga.
Few things.
First, Assange maybe cut his teeth as a low level “hacker” but Wikileaks is built on publishing information that they receive from whistle blowers - they don’t actually “hack”, which you surely knew.
Second, I’ll say it again - there is no evidence that Manning’s disclosures lead to fatalities. Why are people so up in arms about this when the true issue is the clear war crimes of the US government on the Iraqi people + two Reuters journalists.
Third, there is no evidence that the DNC information came from Russia. What’s more, there is little to no evidence it was a “hack”. VIPS continually claim it was a local leak. Wikileaks and Assange has continually denied the Russian link - who are you going to believe? The intelligence community whose remit is to lie and obfuscate or Assange/Wikileaks which has a 100% flawless record in publishing the truth? Let’s get real now.