John Cusack: What Is an Assange?

[marmar]

from HuffPost:



John Cusack

What Is an Assange?
Posted: 01/01/2013 7:28 pm


This week, I was proud to join the board and help launch the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a new organization which plans on crowd-funding for a variety of independent journalism outlets whose prime mission is to seek transparency and accountability in government. You can read about the first group of four organizations -- which includes the National Security Archive, MuckRock News, and The UpTake and WikiLeaks -- here.

Recently, I sat down with George Washington Law School professor and constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley and my close friend Kevin McCabe to discuss WikiLeaks' impact on transparency, the government's response, and the comparison to the Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg (also a co-founder of the Freedom of the Press Foundation).

.....(snip).....

John Cusack: Yes, in many ways, it's world-changing. Are Assange and Wiki leaks basically saying there's no one who'll do this journalism anymore, so we are compelled to do it? Or is he filling some other space, or trying to trump journalistic space. Legally, whats the difference? Why is he punished but the New York Times is not? They published his material.

I think you're saying it's such a vaster terrain than the Pentagon Papers that it may explain the frenzy -- when the publisher for the New York Times and reporters around Ellsberg release had to just say to themselves -- vietnam lies --all right, these guys are going to come after us -- Maybe we'll go to jail, maybe we won't. But they made the call, and they published it. Wikileaks is going after all governments all over the world.

Jonathan Turley: I think what Assange showed, more than any journalist or activist perhaps in history, is the sheer degree of duplicity and deception by this government and governments around the world. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-cusack/what-is-an-assange_b_2317824.html

[snot]

1. K&R'd.

[ZombieHorde]

2. Good read. I liked some of the comments too.

I think this comment is interesting:

Thaddeus Orwell

21 Fans

"Jonathan Turley: Journalists have been adopting a very narrow definition because they have a legitimate concern that, with the ability to create a blog in a matter of minutes, everyone can claim to be a journalist. If everyone is a journalist, then no one will likely have journalistic privileges. Journalists survive on these privileges and those privileges will evaporate if everyone can claim them."

Okay, I have to say I think this is nonsense. The Constitution protects freedom of the press, not freedom of the journalistic elite. There should be no legal difference between someone working at an establishment mouthpiece like the New York Times and any other blogger. So, this idea that "if everyone is a journalist, no one will have journalistic privileges" is infuriating to me, because the answer to that problem should be to extend those journalistic privileges to all! It's not like there is some finite amount of "journalistic privilege" out there and that too many people exercising their right of freedom of the press is going to exhaust it. Anyone who is not blind can see there is no difference between what Assange does and an investagative journalist does, it's just done it a different way that angers the powerful. And they should be angry, and scared. That is the job of the press, to keep those people in line.

[Octafish]

3. Exactly the Journalist's Job

Comfort the Afflicted.
Afflict the Comfortable.