The Fate of Journalism & Julian Assange

Kristinn Hrafnsson, Editor-In-Chief of WikiLeaks
 Australian National Press Club, 3 December 2019

It is a great pleasure to be with you at Australia’s National Press Club on Ngunnawal land.  I pay my respect to Ngunnawal elders past, present and emerging.

I have come a long way, from Iceland’s wintery darkness, to be here in the homeland of Julian Assange on the anniversary of the Eureka Stockade.  Today he’s about as far from the sunshine and beauty of this place as it is possible to be. I wish I didn’t have to convey to you what it’s like in Belmarsh prison.  It is a brick and wire hell of sensory deprivation. It is no place for a journalist or a publisher, and it is no place for an Australian who comes from this bright and warm place. After just a few hours of visiting Julian in that place, I find myself very angry and almost stripped of hope.

Julian has been there for 6 months now, mostly alone in a cell for over 20 hours a day – virtually in solitary confinement. I don’t know how much longer he can last.  He is a resilient and strong man – and I should know, I have worked with him closely for 10 years – but he is no longer the man I met back then.  He has sacrificed everything to publish what whistleblowers have entrusted to WikiLeaks. And every release comes from leaks – WikiLeaks does not hack, it publishes what whistleblowers provide. And we keep on doing so because whistleblowers keep trusting WikiLeaks with material.

Recently whistleblowers entrusted WikiLeaks with documents about bribery, money laundering and corruption – the FishRot Files. Two ministers in Namibia have just been forced to resign because they were revealed to be corrupt and taking bribes.

Another whistleblower recently provided email communication to then Chief of Cabinet of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Bob Fairweather. The email was from someone who was in the inspection team that visited the site of an alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria, in April 2018.  Remember, this is the alleged chemical weapons attack that saw Syria bombed by the US, France and the UK.  The email outright accuses the leadership of omitting information and misrepresenting the facts.  The emails also shows how much pressure the US was bringing to bear on an organisation that is supposed to be independent and impartial.

Julian has sacrificed everything so that whistleblowers can shine light on this kinds of serious wrongdoing, so the public can understand truths about our world, and for the principles of press freedom.  He should not die for these principles. He should not be tortured, as the UN Torture expert states is occurring.  He should not be extradited for publishing.   He should not face 175 years in a US jail for publishing information about wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and activities at Guantanamo Bay, which is what the charges related to. He should not face jail for informing Australians, and the rest of the world, about the true nature of the wars we are fighting in. It’s time to bring this Australian citizen home.

What I want to discuss with you today is the fate of journalism and Julian – and I look forward to your questions and thoughts. But before I discuss who or what is a journalist, when government secrecy is legitimate or excessive, let me say some thank yous.

I want to thank Kerry O’Brien, one of your finest journalists, for what he said at the Walkleys last week. He made an important speech about the fate of journalism. For those of you who weren’t there, this is what he said, “Julian Assange is mouldering in a British prison awaiting extradition to the United States where he may pay for their severe embarrassment with a life in prison.  Again, this government could demonstrate its commitment to a free press by using its significant influence with its closest ally to gain his return to Australia.” I want to thank everyone who applauded when he said that, and it was almost all of the Australian journalists there.

I agree also with the leader of the MEAA – the journalists union in this country – of which Julian has been a card carrying member since 2007. Thank you Paul Murphy, chief executive of the MEAA, for saying at the Walkleys: “Julian Assange may be extradited to the United States to possibly face a lifetime in prison. Among the charges he is accused of, publishing material that could harm the national security of the United States. The scope of those words should alarm every journalist.”

There was loud applause when this was said too. Because Australian journalists get what is at stake, particularly after the raids on the ABC and on a journalist’s home in this town, and some have understood this all along. And here I mean journalists and writers like Phillip Adams, Fran Kelly, Andrew Fowler, Bernard Keane, and Guy Rundle. These journalists have made a consistent effort to wade through the complexities of Julian’s case to see the simple truths at stake, principally those about press freedom.

I want to thank Scott Ludlam who is here today. For many years one could have been forgiven for thinking only one Australian parliamentarian understood the danger arising from so many national security laws and the significance of the persecution of a publisher for publishing.  But now I can thank also Andrew Wilkie MP and George Christensen MP, who co-Chair the Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Group. This group is an eclectic mixture of people from across the spectrum of politics who can all agree that it is time to see Julian Assange arrive back in Australia a free man.  So thank you for getting it, Barnaby Joyce, Rebekha Sharkie, Rex Patrick, Julian Hill, Steve Georganas, Richard di Natale, Adam Bandt, Peter Whish-Wilson and Zali Steggal.

I also want to thank someone here today who is in court tomorrow – for a peaceful protest climbing onto your parliament with a banner that read: Free Julian Assange: No US extradition. I hope the judge you face is similar to the Magistrate another protester faced in Melbourne last week for peacefully protesting at the UK consulate. That Magistrate stated that some would commend the person for occupying the UK Consulate and did not impose a conviction or a good behaviour bond but a $400 fine instead.

I want to thank the doctors who signed a statement of concern about Julian’s health, one of whom is here today.  Thank you Dr. Sue Wareham.

How could I not acknowledge and thank Julian’s parents, whose agony it is difficult to imagine. Christine, Julian’s mother, once said that as a mother she wishes Julian had never started WikiLeaks, but as a citizen she was proud of her son and supported WikiLeaks and its aims.  That is the kind of person who raised Julian, a person of principle who thinks like a citizen. It becomes clear through knowing his parents how Julian came to be Julian. I am a parent, and as a parent, I truly don’t know how they have endured 10 years of their son being mercilessly smeared while watching his deterioration, suffering and isolation.

For what? For publishing material that, as Kerry O’Brien said, embarrassed the United States.  But WikiLeaks wasn’t alone, and very often wasn’t first in publishing documents on Guantanamo, Iraq and Cablegate in 2009 and 2010. We partnered with some media organisations in this country, and with Der Speigel in Germany, the Guardian in the UK and The New York Times in the United States and many others.  That is also worth a thank you – the power of what we collectively made available to the public, about wars and war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, about crimes against humanity at Guantanamo Bay – it was worthwhile, and it changed things, not enough things, but some, for the better. At the time, many agreed and welcomed WikiLeaks, which was awarded the Walkley Award for Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism in 2011. There are dozens of other awards: Julian has received 3 journalism prizes this year alone.  I continue to believe that WikiLeaks and very many media outlets were right to expose what was happening in our names.

The United States is trying to prosecute an Australian citizen, who was not even in the United States but in Europe, a gross overreach into the sovereign territory of other countries and a dangerous precedent.  What precedent does this set? It is a new form of forced rendition. Only this time not with a sack over the head and an orange jumpsuit but with the enabling of the UK legal system with the apparent support of the Australian government.  If Russia and China were doing this to an Australian journalist, we’d be hearing a lot more about it, and we will if this precedent is set.

I strongly believe that resolving this issue has important international implications. Prolonging it creates an enabling environment for the deterioration of press freedom standards globally. All around the world, media organisations, prominent individuals and grassroots campaign efforts are growing in expressing concern, by lobbying, and by taking protest action. The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Guardian have expressed grave concern about the charges he faces.

UK Special Envoy on Media Freedom Amal Clooney stated at the June Global Conference for Media Freedom, the charges ‘criminalize common practices in journalism’, which the American Civil Liberties Union has warned, ‘establish a dangerous precedent that can be used to target all news organizations that hold the government accountable by publishing its secrets’. The bottom line is that the fate of Julian and journalism around the world are entwined.

Let me address this issue of whether Julian is a journalist.  It’s actually pretty insulting to be honest.  I’m recognised as a journalist but I didn’t need awards to know what I was doing was journalism for 20 years before I joined WikiLeaks and for the 10 years since I did. The High Court of the United Kingdom is not confused on this matter.  It described Julian Assange  as “…a journalist, well known through his operation of WikiLeaks” in the opening line of its 2 November 2011 ruling.  The US Army Counterintelligence Centre is similarly not confused.  It described WikiLeaks as a ‘news organization,’ and Assange as a ‘writer’ and ‘journalist’ that had ‘show[n] journalist responsibility to the newsworthiness or fair use of the classified document’. The two relevant professional bodies in Australia are not confused either.  The MEAA made it clear in 2007 – and the Walkley board in 2011 when Julian got the prestigious award – and the IFJ, the International Federation of Journalists that gave him his international journalist card.

The US indictment documents against Julian describe routine journalistic practices. The first relates to taking measures to protect the identity of a source, and the remaining 17 charges relate to receiving and publishing information. The prosecution is being pursued under the Espionage Act, the first use against a publisher in US history. It is a prosecution in which there is no public interest defence.

Alan Rusbridger, former editor of the Guardian, (who acknowledges Julian as a journalist, and is surely qualified to do so) described the journalistic activities in the charges as, ’the kind of activity that honourable journalists do all the time’.  WikiLeaks has experimented and challenged some journalistic practices, and as Hart Cohen and Antonio Castillo say in the Global Media Journal, it has also changed the way we think about the ‘rules’. How?

What WikiLeaks did when it was first established in 2006 was provide technological anonymity and untraceability to whistleblowers and sources. This is a bit similar to what the ABC installed last week, SecureDrop, and what the Guardian and New York Times caught up with a few years ago by installing it too.  WikiLeaks was out in front in understanding the implications of the internet for journalism, its promise and potential for protecting sources, for realising new ways a “networked fourth estate” could provide information to the public, and other media outlets are now applying those learnings.

What WikiLeaks specializes in is the analysis and publication of large datasets of censored or otherwise restricted official materials involving international relations, war, spying and corruption. When he could still speak for himself, Julian often referred to how an archive, rather than a few selected documents, can shine light on how human institutions actually behave, how they evolve, how power is exercised. It is the archive being made public, and not a few select documents, that has the scale to deal with the problems of a corrupt institution.

Is there a time and a place for secrecy? Of course there is – WikiLeaks uses it extensively, and so do governments, and it is legitimate when there are delicate diplomatic engagements underway, when its about dangerous materials, for all sorts of reasons.   But what we have seen so much, and what we have revealed, is how rampant secrecy has become, and how corruption thrives and becomes epidemic under conditions of secrecy.  We have also revealed the unreasonable over-classification of documents, when governments should not hide all their actions behind official secrecy while seeking to know more and more about every one of us. To speak of a balance between government secrecy and the public’s right to know is to not acknowledge how seriously out of balance these things have become.

It’s a journalist’s responsibility to publish and inform the public and undo unnecessary secrecy. Just like we journalists must keep our sources secret, we have a necessity to do that. It’s not our responsibility to protect intelligence agencies or protect police if they act in an incompetent or unlawful way, or when a whistleblower has risked everything because something is very wrong and only sunlight can halt the wrongdoing in its tracks.

As Andrew Fowler, another great Australian journalist has observed, WikiLeaks is an old-fashioned idea about journalism reborn in the age of the Internet.

Did Julian Assange himself seek to redact the war logs and cables?  Yes, as Mark Davis recently attested at a Sydney ‘Politics in the Pub’ event, he witnessed Julian stay up night after night to do just that.

The Harvard professor Yochai Benkler who testified in the Manning trial, wrote a fine paper about the importance of a free and irresponsible press. By irresponsible he meant not responsible to one group or another. He meant that it is the responsibility of the press to remain free and to publish that which powerful interests would prefer to be kept secret.

When the ABC launched SecureDrop last week, this comment was made, “It’s a sad commentary on our times that SecureDrop is necessary: we hope one day it isn’t.”  Similarly, it’s a sad commentary on our time that WikiLeaks is necessary: we hope one day it isn’t.  For now, while whistleblowers keep trusting our platform with information, it is.  And we will keep publishing.

The UK-US Extradition Treaty stipulates that if an offence is political, extradition from the UK must not proceed.  Well, the extradition of Julian to the US must not proceed then. The charges against Julian are political and being used in a political way to deter journalism and publishing.

The US authorities have spied on him, including live webstreaming of his meetings with lawyers and colleagues, including from the Embassy’s toilets, for years. An attempt was made to blackmail WikiLeaks – to extract 3 million Euros from me in fact – in exchange for these surveillance materials collected by Spanish firm Under Cover Global.  This matter is now before the Spanish courts but gives a lot of insight into the lengths the superpower has been prepared to go. The German National Broadcaster has filed a criminal complaint about this firm spying on its journalists visiting the Embassy.

I’ve travelled 10 time zones to be here today because there are things you can do in defence of your colleague and your profession that we can’t do from London or Reykjavík.

You are able to ensure that timely and accurate information about the importance of this case reaches a wide Australian audience. You are able to disarm and dismiss the ruthless misinformation campaign that this is somehow about Sweden, or the treatment of his cat, or corruption within the US democratic party. In keeping the focus on the indictments for publishing, you keep the focus on the truth.

You are in the position of facing the Prime Minister and his colleagues day after day, sometimes eye to eye. You can ask him: what has he done to get Julian home. How has he stood up for his fellow citizen. Your government did take steps to secure the freedom of James Ricketson, also of Melinda Taylor, also of Peter Greste.  Please be direct. Please be insistent. Ask for details. Not platitudes. Please be unrelenting and prepared to back each other when the inevitable evasions occur. You, above all people are able to distinguish between publishing and espionage; a distinction that the US government and its allies seem intent on erasing. And you know as well as I that if they are successful in this, then Julian Assange won’t be the last of our colleagues to have his life destroyed in this line of work.

Look around this room today. You each have a role in the political ecosystem that helps keep things safe for everyone else. I know you are under a great deal of pressure but this is where we must draw the line. As our friends in the union movement say, “an injury to one is an injury to all”. Please help us get our colleague and our friend safely home.

Australia at the moment is engaged in a debate about secrecy, whistleblowing and journalism, especially around national security. This is a very old debate, because journalism at its core will always be about power – about subjecting the powerful, and the way they use power, to scrutiny, and overcoming their resistance to that and supporting those who want to hold them accountable. What’s changed is that the internet has given journalists and whistleblowers more tools to undertake that process – but also given the powerful more tools to resist, and to attack those who try to subject them to scrutiny.

Thus we have an old conflict being fought on new battlefields, in new media, on new devices and platforms. But the stakes are perhaps greater than they have ever been.

Thank you and I look forward to your questions and comments.

https://defend.wikileaks.org/2019/12/03/the-fate-of-journalism-and-julian-assange/