It's a fact he's world famous. We've heard of him.
It's a fact he's a journalist. We've all read his journalism or at least know of its existence. [1]
It's a claim that "he was an asset for a hostile intelligence service" and one with zero evidence to back it up. Everything Assange has done the New York Times has also done. Every single thing he has been charged with in this case. That's also a fact.
Just to nitpick on your logic a little. Your first two statements might be true without the statement that he is a world famous journalist is. Trump is world famous, and he's a golfer. But he's not a world famous golfer, at least not in the usual sense of the word.
Just to nitpick right back at you, if Assange had not published his journalism and its source materials you'd never had heard of him and he would not qualify as famous. So that makes him a world famous journalist.
The idea that Trump is famous for playing golf is risible is your point but it does not apply here. There is nothing else that gained Assange fame other than publishing more scoops than any other journalist ever has. by orders of magnitude. Your nitpick is like trying to claim Tiger Woods is world famous for being the victim of domestic violence who also happens to play golf.
I knew him as the founder and director of Wikileaks, and that Wikileaks collaborates with a number of publications to get the content of some classified information known to the general public. I didn't know that Julian Assange wrote much himself and in similar fashion worked directly as a journalist. So I'd say that at least one person (me) knew about him without knowing him as a journalist.
Your last sentence make it sound like understood the complete opposite of what I said.
Anyway, I'm not interested in having a discussion about Julian Assange, where I think we probably are on the same side. I just wanted to make a the small side remark about the fault in the logic.
The reason you heard of Wikileaks and Assange isn't for golf. It is for publishing journalism and in particular journalism containing a vast number of journalistic scoops. So many that it catapulted him to international fame.
If you believed wikileaks and Assange were famous for golfing or hacking or leaking or baking pie I have sympathy because the smears on what they did and do have been as relentless as they have been obviously false, (one example that won't go away: "he's a leaker who never actually leaked anything but instead published leaks like the New York Times does which makes him a leaker").
Now you know better. He's a worlds famous journalist and publisher. Without publishing and journalism you don't know him from a bar of soap.
Another, separate point worth making. You don't have to like /him/ and support /him/ to support his rights which are also every person engaging in journalisms rights and also /your/ rights. You don't have to hate a government or a nation to oppose when it overreaches. This is a pretty big overreach.
I cannot recall a single journalistic work of Julian Assange.
All I know is that he facilitated the dumping of US classified documents onto a publicly accessible webpage. Not making a moral judgment about that here, but that is _exclusively_ the way in which I know him.
Why do use so many words where one, "publishing" is more accurate?
The New York Times facilitated the dumping of the then President's tax returns onto a publicly accessible webpage without being able to confirm they were not stolen by russian spies.
> The reason you heard of Wikileaks and Assange isn't for golf.
Exactly like the reason you've heard of Trump isn't that he's such a great golf player. But he plays golf, and he is famous... And still not "a famous golf player" like, say, Tiger Woods.
> It is for publishing journalism and in particular journalism containing a vast number of journalistic scoops. So many that it catapulted him to international fame.
No, the reason I've heard of Assange is that he helped people leak the content of what became a vast number of journalistic scoops to actual journalists, who wrote it up and published it.
Leaking is leaking and journalism is journalism, but leaking is not journalism.
> Leaking is leaking and journalism is journalism, but leaking is not journalism.
One more time.
Chelsea Manning leaked the documents. Wikileaks _published_ the leaked documents leaked by Chelsea Manning along with commentary on those documents.
Wikileaks did _not_ leak - they had no access to anything to leak.
Once the doucments were sent to wikileaks they were leaked. They received the leaks and published. Just like the New York Times does. Just like the New York Times did for Donald Trump's tax returns where they did not know the source of the leak. Just like the New York Times did for the Pentagon Papers (where they did know the source) and the Post did for Watergate & "Deep Throat" where they did know and assisted to conceal the source of the stories that ended Nixon's presidency. Do you really not see this? No amount of "Assange is not a journalist!" Can possibly work unless you also make the New York Times journalists not journalists. Or you have politicians approving who is and isn't journalists just like Stalin used to. It's flipping amazing that we're looking at a Stalinist "you're not a journalist, gulag for you!" Approach in the USA. Un-flipping-believable to be honest.
"Ah but they helped their source not be found out..." Just like the New York Times does. The Washington Post. Or any serious news operation. Every one.
The actions taken by wikileaks are the exact same actions taken by the New York Times. Journalism is journalism. Any citizen can do journalism. Any citizen has the right to do journalism. Any citizen has the protections accorded by law for doing journalism. Unless you make journalism itself illegal.
What about Wikileaks secure, anonymous drop boxes for leaked documents where they don't even know who's sending them. The New York Times has that too and published the President's tax returns without knowing who provided them. Could it have been Russian Spies? Who knows! Authentic, newsworthy so publish has always been the test.
And that's the story here. Making journalism illegal.
You can keep trying to frame wikileaks as "not journalism" but if you do down that road you get state media because what the Times does, the Post, everything more than petty gossip magazines, ie actually breaking stories of corruption and illegal activity, as Wikileaks did, is /no/ different according to the whatever law you have.
Again you don't have to like Wikileaks or Assange to object to the massive overreach here impacting /your/ rights. Neither do you have to even so much as mildly dislike the USA to object to the massive overreach and actually defend what the USA and its armed forces are meant to stand for. You can do that if you love the USA and what it represents for sure.
I can't stand Michael Moore nor could I stand the late Rush Limbaugh. They both make my blood boil. But I'll absolutely support their rights because those rights belong to everyone. There's no "yeah but we'll take them away but just for this asshole."
The rights exist, even for those you loathe, or they don't exist, for you or everyone you love, like and respect.
> Do you really not see this? No amount of "Assange is not a journalist!" Can possibly work unless you also make the New York Times journalists not journalists.
Wikileaks chucked what they received up on a web page. They're "journalists" in the same sense that the guy running the printing presses at the NYT is "a journalist".
>Wikileaks chucked what they received up on a web page
After partnering with the New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, El Pais, redacting anything putting people in danger and inviting the US Govt to tell them anything they wanted redacted (who did not suggest a single redaction, nothing) and then writing their own stories on it then, yes, they did put the source materials on the website so you /you/ can decide their and their partners' reporting is accurate, all of whom linked to specific source documents in their stories. About the Afghanistan war there doesn't seem much doubt anymore does there? Another decade of increased resources got nowhere with President Trump, then President Biden and a majority of Americans agreeing that it is a failed mission and withdrawal the correct option. The level corruption involved, snouts in the trough, is astounding.
The quantity of lies about Wikileaks is also astounding. They're as much like the printing press operators as your favorite goldfish. I doubt you're deliberately lying and pretending they didn't redact documents, nor partner with newspapers, nor write their own stories and you actually believe what you wrote there. How badly have you been lied to, it's astounding, huh? Why? Do you think another expensive in lives and money decade of the Afghanistan war had anything to do with it? Who did that benefit? The answer is many different parties for many different reasons all of whom /hated/ being called on it with very strong, published evidence.
He leaked /nothing/. No really. Absolutely nothing.
He published documents leaked by others as supporting evidence for his journalism and to allow other journalists to use the source material. The documents were redacted in partnership with the Guardian, New York Times, Washington Post, El Pais, Le Monde and various others who also linked the source documents.
As soon as you have a standard for what doesn't qualify as journalism because you don't like it you have state controlled media.
The sheer quantity of lies about what he did or didn't do is really quite mind-boggling - it's so easy to check.
What point about Chelsea Manning are you trying to make? I'm sure she could engage in journalism if she chose. Her and your rights should be protected. Daniel Elsberg does regularly.
> It's a fact he's a journalist. We've all read his journalism or at least know of its existence.
That's circular reasoning. He's a journalist because we read his journalism. And, ergo, his work is journalism because he's a journalist.
It all works out... unless of course, he was just pretending to be a journalist/ activist and was actually working in concert with a hostile intelligence agency to other, less noble, ends.
Do you think siding with Pompeo on this issue is more sensible than "siding" with NGOs like ACLU, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Reporters Without Borders?
> It’s also possible he was an asset for a hostile intelligence service posing as a journalist.
Also possible he's the flying spaghetti monster. There's equal evidence for both (none)
Mike Pompeo sounds extremely salty about negative press coverage. Of course they're going to do their best to discredit Assange after he embarrassed them so thoroughly.
What exactly is the bright line between a good newspaper and an intelligence service that broadcasts information? News is that which someone doesn't what known.
Pre-Trump, I used to joke that American foreign policy was determined by oil companies and defense contractors. Then Mike Pompeo became Secretary of State, and it wasn't funny anymore. Well, it hadn't been funny since Trump; Pompeo took over, of course, from former ExxonMobile CEO Rex Tillerson, who headed the Department of State for the first Trump year.
Given Pompeo's business history, I think it's fair to understand everything he says with the knowledge that he's an avatar of the American military-industrial complex [0]. With that lens in place, of course WikiLeaks is "hostile", have you seen Collateral Murder?!
What difference does it make if he’s a journalist, an astronaut, or a haberdasher? Shouldn’t the law apply equally regardless of your profession and level of celebrity?
Yes I agree. He himself declared numerous times that his intention was to be hostile to the US (and going as far as naming the Clintons explicitely as a target of his campaign).
That’s a claim not a fact. It’s also possible he was an asset for a hostile intelligence service posing as a journalist.
I’m not normally one to side with Mike Pompeo, but I agree with his assessment on this one:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/13/us/politics/mike-pompeo-c...
“‘WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service,’ Mr. Pompeo said.”