Press Freedom

The US Is Using The Guardian To Justify Jailing Assange For Life

September 24, 2020 Jonathan Cook. Educate! Journalism, Julian Assange, Press Freedom, Wikileaks

Julian Assange is not on trial simply for his liberty and his life. He is fighting for the right of every journalist to do hard-hitting investigative journalism without fear of arrest and extradition to the United States. Assange faces 175 years in a US super-max prison on the basis of claims by Donald Trump’s administration that his exposure of US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan amounts to “espionage”. The charges against Assange rewrite the meaning of “espionage” in unmistakably dangerous ways. Publishing evidence of state crimes, as Assange’s Wikileaks organisation has done, is covered by both free speech and public interest defences.

September 18: Julian Assange Hearing Report

September 19, 2020 Defend Wikileaks. Educate! Extradition, Julian Assange, Press Freedom, Wikileaks

New Zealand investigative journalist Nicky Hager took to stand to testify about using WikiLeaks documents in his work. Hager published Other People’s Wars, New Zealand in Afghanistan, Iraq and the war on terror, and said that WikiLeaks-released military and diplomatic files “greatly increased my understanding of the conduct of the war. It would have been impossible to write the book without these confidential and leaked sources.” In his written testimony, Hager explained, “It is in general impossible to research and write about war to a useful standard without access to sources that the authorities concerned regard as sensitive and out of bounds — and all the more so with the subject of war crimes.”

Mainstream US Reporters Silent About Being Spied On

September 19, 2020 Max Blumenthal, The Grayzone. Educate! CIA, Julian Assange, Press Freedom, Surveillance

A Spanish security firm apparently contracted by US intelligence to carry out a campaign of black operations against Julian Assange and his associates spied on several US reporters including Ellen Nakashima, the top national security reporter of the Washington Post, and Lowell Bergman, a New York Times and PBS veteran. To date, Nakashima and her employers at the Washington Post have said nothing about the flagrant assault on their constitutional rights by UC Global, the security company in charge of Ecuadorian embassy in London, which seemingly operated under the watch of the CIA’s then-director, Mike Pompeo.

News Media Who Ignore The Assange Trial Are Admitting They Don’t Care About Journalism

September 18, 2020 Caitlin Johnstone. Educate! Journalism, Julian Assange, Press Freedom, Wikileaks

The Sydney Morning Herald just published an article titled “Julian Assange interrupts extradition hearing again” about the WikiLeaks founder’s correct interjection that he never put anyone’s lives in danger with the publication of the Manning leaks a decade ago. It’s actually a rather shocking smear piece for the SMH, who has been one of the better Australian publications at giving Assange a fair hearing over the years. The article’s author Latika Bourke spends an inordinate amount of time waxing on about Assange’s naughty “outburst” and how he was reprimanded for it by the judge...

Assange Hearing: Dramatic Opening Day

September 8, 2020 Consortium News. Educate! Extradition, Julian Assange, Press Freedom, Wikileaks

The dramatic first day of the resumption of Julian Assange’s extradition hearing has ended, with technical problems cutting short the testimony of the first defense witness, Broadcast Journalism Professor Mark Feldstein. Feldstein’s written testimony has been released to the public. On the virtual “stand”–online because of the pandemic–Feldstein was questioned by the defense. He testified that it was a daily occurrence for the press to publish classified information; that he did not expect publishers to be prosecuted for this because the First Amendment protects publishers, allowing them to expose the inner workings of government that citizens have a right to know.

Heavyweights Weigh In On Assange “Show Trial”

September 7, 2020 Popular Resistance. Educate! Julian Assange, Pentagon Papers, Press Freedom, Wikileaks

An online Zoom call will take place for members of the press this Wednesday, September 9 at 1:00 pm EST to address the United States attempt to extradite WikiLeaks’ publisher, Julian Assange. The call will feature Dan Ellsberg, the whistleblower whose release of the Pentagon Papers helped to bring the Viet Nam War to an end, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges, and James Goodale, former Vice President of the New York Times. "If Julian Assange--the first journalist to be indicted in the US for doing journalism--is extradited and prosecuted, the First Amendment will be in a terminal state as protection for investigative reporting on "national security," said Dan Ellsberg.

War On Journalism Resumes On Monday

September 7, 2020 Nozomi Hayase, Commondreams. Educate! Extradition, Julian Assange, Press Freedom, Wikileaks

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s extradition hearing is set to start on Monday, Sept. 7 at the Old Bailey, the Central Criminal Court of London, and could last three or four weeks. Assange has been indicted on 17 charges of espionage and one charge of conspiring with a source to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for his reporting on the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the torture at Guantanamo Bay. These charges against Assange are a part of a war on journalism. This is the first time that the Espionage Act of 1917 has been used to prosecute a journalist, in this case an Australian citizen publishing material from outside of the U.S.

Scheer Intelligence: The Cartoonist The Cops Didn’t Let Get Away

July 17, 2020 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. Educate! Los Angeles, Podcast, Police abuse, Press Freedom

Ted Rall, the Pulitzer Prize finalist, columnist and cartoonist joins Robert Scheer on in this week’s episode of “Scheer Intelligence” to talk about his firing by the Los Angeles Times and and his latest book, “Political Suicide: The Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party.” The host commends the journalist for his “courageous” and “gutsy” reporting on the Afghanistan War and a long, noteworthy career. Yet, it is precisely his candid storytelling through words and visual arts that earned him a place in the Los Angeles Police Department’s crosshairs. The story of Ted Rall’s firing as a cartoonist by Los Angeles Times in 2015 reveals the historically cozy relationship that existed between the media and the police. Writing a blog for the LA Times, in which he detailed an encounter with an LAPD officer who’d detained and handcuffed him for allegedly jaywalking years earlier, ultimately led to Rall’s very public firing and a legal case that now threatens to bankrupt him.

On Contact: Collateral Murder Video

July 12, 2020 Chris Hedges, RT. Resistance Report Chelsea Manning, Press Freedom, Wars and Militarism, Wikileaks

On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to journalist, Dean Yates, who, 13 years ago, was the head of Reuters’ Baghdad bureau. On July 12, 2007, Yates learned two of his employees, Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen, had been fired on and killed by the US Army. Their deaths, and those of others, were the focus of the now-infamous video Collateral Murder, leaked by Chelsea Manning and released by Wikileaks.

Australian Journalist Threatened With Prosecution For Exposing War Crimes

July 3, 2020 Oscar Grenfell, WSWS. Educate! Afghan Files, Australia, Media, Press Freedom

In another major assault on press freedom, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) journalist Dan Oakes has been threatened with prosecution for his role in exposing war crimes committed by the country’s Special Forces soldiers in Afghanistan. The Australian Federal Police (AFP) issued a statement last night, confirming that they had sent a brief of evidence to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), following a protracted investigation targeting the ABC. The AFP indicated that the probe began after it received “a referral on 11 July, 2017, from the Chief of the Defence Force and then-Acting Secretary for Defence in relation to the broadcast and publication of information assessed as classified material.” The statement confirmed that the investigation included the unprecedented AFP raid of the ABC’s Sydney headquarters in June last year.

Update On Assange: The Most Important Press Freedom Case Of This Era

June 29, 2020 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Clearing the FOG. Podcast Extradition, Julian Assange, Press Freedom, Wikileaks

This past week, just as public sentiment and corporate media attention were shifting in favor of Julian Assange, the United States issued another superseding indictment in his extradition case. The indictment doesn't add any charges, it merely uses public information to smear Assange's reputation and attempt to portray him as a hacker instead of the journalist and publisher that he is. This shows that the US government has a weak case against Assange. Joe Lauria, an investigative journalist and senior editor of Consortium News, explains the new indictment and provides an update on Julian Assange. The Assange case is the most important press freedom case of this era. It will determine our right to know what our government and corporations are doing.

Assange Extradition: ’60 Minutes’ Gives Assange Fair Shake

June 23, 2020 Consortium News. Educate! Extradition, Julian Assange, Press Freedom, Wikileaks

Australia’s 60 Minutes newsmagazine Sunday night aired an extensive interview with Stella Morris, Julian Assange’s partner, and featured the two boys the couple have had together. While the promos for the segment during the week indicated it would focus on salacious questions such as, “How does one get pregnant in an embassy?” and “Did Pamela Anderson give your relationship cover?,” the 24-minute spot ditched the usual smears against the imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher and instead humanized him to a large national audience. The segment made clear Assange was never charged with rape in Sweden, was only wanted for questioning, and that that inquiry has been closed. It reports that the CIA surveilled Assange 24/7 in the embassy, including on privileged conversations with his lawyers; that the CIA plotted to kidnap Assange, poison him and steal one of his boy’s diapers for DNA to prove it was his child.

United States: Over 400 Attacks On Press Freedom In Under A Month

June 21, 2020 Deutsche Welle. Educate! Media, Police violence, Press Freedom, United States

One of those incidents involved a DW reporter named Stefan Simons. He was shot at with rubber bullets and threatened with arrest in Minneapolis several weeks ago. How typical is his experience based on your research? Unfortunately, Stefan's experience of getting shot at by the police with non-lethal projectiles is not uncommon. During the past few weeks, we have recorded at least 89 rubber bullet or projectile incidents, 27 pepper sprayings is 49 tear gassings. Not all of those were necessarily directed at the journalists because they were journalists. Sometimes it's simply an issue of being in a protest in a crowd. But there were numerous incidents in which the police targeted journalists. We are deeply concerned about this and we are requesting that the police open investigations into these incidents.

Politicians Call On UK To Release Assange

June 16, 2020 In Consortium News. Resist! Extradition, Julian Assange, Press Freedom, Wikileaks

As current and former elected representatives in democracies committed to human rights, the presumption of innocence and the rule of law, we wish to support the urgent appeal sent to you by Australian MPs Andrew Wilkie and George Christensen, who wrote: “We ask that you urgently reconsider providing Mr Assange with release from Belmarsh Prison to monitored home detention, as he fits all of the grounds noted for such early release by leading organisations as the World Health Organisation, the United Nations and the UK Prison Officers Association. These organisations have been unanimous in calling for the release of all non-violent COVID-19 prisoners, and we ask that you give compassionate consideration to the following...

Media Relations Controls Marginalize The Press … And The Public

June 10, 2020 Kathryn Foxhall, Quill Mag. Educate! Censorship, Media, Police, Press Freedom

As protests erupt in the wake of police brutality, one key point for journalists to remember is that many police agencies have enforced silence on police officers. And that creates an historically fearful secrecy. In an SPJ-sponsored 2016 survey, 56% of police reporters said they can rarely or never interview a police officer without involving a department’s public information officer. Another 30% said they can do those interviews only some of the time. Over 23% of police reporters said, all or most of the time, they had been prevented by a PIO from interviewing officers or investigators. A total of 57% said that blockage happened at least some of the time.

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