Why Journalists Aren’t Standing Up for WikiLeaks - Newsweek

[WillyT]

Why Journalists Aren’t Standing Up for WikiLeaks
Three reasons that efforts to prosecute Julian Assange aren’t drawing more of an outcry about the First Amendment.
by Ben Adler - Newsweek
January 04, 2011

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If you think prosecuting journalists is the province solely of the sort of authoritarian governments in the developing world and the former communist bloc, think again. In the wake of WikiLeaks’s late-November dump of thousands of diplomatic cables, American provocateurs are urging the prosecution of the site’s founder, Julian Assange, and others who were involved in bringing the cables to the public’s attention. Of course, the alleged leaker, U.S. Army intelligence analyst Pfc. Bradley Manning, will face prosecution for giving away state secrets. Reporters and publishers who receive material from a government leaker, however, are typically considered protected from prosecution under the First Amendment.

But conservatives are calling for Assange’s head, in some cases literally. Sarah Palin urged that Assange be “pursued with the same urgency we pursue Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders,” and The Weekly Standard’s William Kristol wants the U.S. to “use our various assets to harass, snatch or neutralize Julian Assange and his collaborators.” And many are also inclined to prosecute the newspapers that worked with Assange. Sen. Joe Lieberman and former Bush administration attorney general Michael Mukasey argue for using the Espionage Act of 1917—which has never been used against a publisher before—to prosecute Assange and have suggested that The New York Times, which published material from WikiLeaks, could potentially be prosecuted as well. The Department of Justice announced that it is investigating whether Assange will be charged.

In the face of such an assault on press freedom, you might expect the American media to respond assertively. But the pushback has been piecemeal and somewhat muted. The board of Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc., a nonprofit organization, urged the U.S. government to “exercise great restraint,” warning of “actions that could undermine American traditions of a free press and open government.” The Committee to Protect Journalists sent a letter to President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder forthrightly opposing any prosecution. But other organizations, such as the American Society of Magazine Editors and the National Association of Broadcasters, have not made any statements on the subject. The Society of Professional Journalists issued a tortured, somewhat inscrutable press release, saying their members could not reach a consensus on the probity of WikiLeaks’s actions and whether it should be considered journalism, but they seemed to accept the possibility of prosecution, writing, “If laws were broken in obtaining <information>, then the legal process will move forward.”

Newspaper and magazine editors have generally avoided issuing statements on the matter, although The Washington Post editorial page came out against prosecution. (The New York Times, which received earlier WikiLeaks document dumps, has not run an editorial on the subject and did not respond to a request for comment as to the reason.)

Many in the foreign press have been more assertive in their defense of WikiLeaks. In Assange’s home country of Australia, the editors of most of the major papers signed a letter to Prime Minister Julia Gillard opposing prosecution of Assange in Australia or the U.S. “WikiLeaks, an organisation that aims to expose official secrets, is doing what the media have always done: bringing to light material that governments would prefer to keep secret,” the letter stated. “To prosecute a media organisation for publishing a leak would be unprecedented in the US, breaching the First Amendment protecting a free press. In Australia, it would seriously curtail Australian media organisations reporting on subjects the government decides are against its interests.”

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More: http://www.newsweek.com/2011/01/04/why-journalists-aren-t-defending-julian-assange.html

:kick:

[midnight]

1. The press is comfortable...

[rpannier]

2. As long as the press corpse have their 6+ figure salaries they aren't going to do anything that

challenges the system

[DeSwiss]

3. What press?

Save for the few independent outlets in the US that one finds on the Internets and the foreign sources whose agendas aren't always clear, nor are they always pristine.

The so-called "media" we have is little more than propaganda instruments for TPTB. All one has to do to confirm this is to do what "Deep Throat" told Bob Woodward to do: "follow the money." http://mapper.nndb.com/">The Boards of all the major media and news outlets serves as a Who's Who of Connective Tissue of this cancerous tumor we call TPTB. They are all connected to each other - and to every major corporation - investment banking - and eventually to just about every governmental agency (particularly those who carry guns and have enforcement powers) that we have. Like a global spider's web. Where they play the parts of the spiders and we're the lunch.

"When Ben Bagdikian first published `The Media Monopoly' in 1982, some 50 corporations controlled most of the major media outlets in the United States: 1,787 daily newspapers; 11,000 magazines; 9,000 radio stations; 1,000 television stations; 2,500 book publishers and seven major movie studios. But the time the fourth edition was released in 1993, the number was down to about 20 corporations, and it is still dropping." ~Molly Ivins, columnist Ft. Worth Star Telegram, from the Introduction to ``Adventures in Medialand'' by Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon.

- We have no press..... (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4681763&mesg_id=4682877">but I repeat myself)

K&R