Alex Massie Alex Massie

Yes, Julian Assange Is A Journalist

I’m not sure I understand the Wikileaks controversy. If one of the many definitions of news is (and always has been) that it is something that someone, somewhere does not want you to know then, yes, Julian Assange is a journalist. Perhaps newsman would be a better, more strictly accurate way of putting it.

As such, it’s strange to see Americans accusing him of treason (he’s an Australian!) or William Hague complaining that the Wikileaks document-dumps put “British lives” at risk. So what?

Then there’s Jonah Goldberg complaining that a column headlined “All Quiet On the Black-Ops Front” and subtitled “Why is Julian Assange Still Alive?” has – this may shock you – been misunderstood. Acording to Goldberg he wasn’t suggesting Assange should be killed (true), merely that no-one should be surprised if he is murdered and that if peoples’ romantic/conspiratorial views of what the CIA are capable of were accurate then Assange would be dead. Or something. As he explains:

[W]hile it’s political palatable to kill a member of al-Qaeda, “assassinating a hipster Australian Web guru as opposed to a Muslim terrorist is the kind of controversy no official dares invite.” Does anyone dispute this?

Regardless, what I find amazing is how so many of these fulminating free-speech lovers seem to think that Assange is not only a journalist but a hero. Indeed, one gets the distinct impression that what offends is any casting of Assange as a bad guy. But of course he’s a bad guy. And the idea that he’s a journalist is a joke. Perhaps it would be easier to see this if Assange were giving all of these documents solely to the Iranian government. But he’s not doing that. He’s giving these documents to the Iranians, and al-Qaeda, and the Chinese, and the Russians and everyone else. So — abracadabra! — that makes him a hero! What nonsense.

[…] a great number of my critics are being willfully idiotic, not only because they’re misreading it, but because they’re rushing to the defense of someone who is doing something indefensible.

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