President Biden opened his speech at Saturday night’s White House Correspondents Dinner with an urgent appeal for the release of imprisoned journalists—and for increased global recognition of the vital importance of robust protections for a free press.
Unfortunately, while Biden’s rhetoric is better than that of his predecessor, his approach to one of the highest-profile cases involving an imprisoned journalist maintains Trump’s line of attack. The Biden administration continues to seek to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on espionage charges stemming from the 2010 publication of evidence of “Collateral Murder” atrocities committed by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Biden’s administration had the chance to end the government’s targeting of Assange. Instead, his Department of Justice has pursued the extradition effort just as zealously as did Trump’s.
That’s what needs to be understood with regard to the US government’s targeting of Assange. He was indicted because he publicly exposed details of troublesome activities that the government wanted to keep secret—which is another way of saying that he engaged in the practice of journalism. And because he did so, he now faces the potential for prosecution by the administration of a president who proudly proclaims that “journalism is not a crime.”
That is not an isolated view. Amnesty International, Pen International, Reporters Without Borders, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and other groups have decried efforts to extradite Assange and called for dropping the charges against him. So, too, have editors and publishers of The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, and El País, who argue that the targeting of Assange for prosecution under the Espionage Act “sets a dangerous precedent, and threatens to undermine America’s First Amendment and the freedom of the press.”
R&I-Rawr
Free Assange
Article URL : https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/biden-julian-assange-press-freedom/