If American journalists want to make the Putin asset, Trump supporter, probably one of the biggest reasons Trump was able to win the Electoral College, the leader of a ratfucking op that Trump thanked and praised more than 100 times, Julian Assange the hill that American journalism makes its stand on, they are only proving what a bunch of discreditable idiots and assholes they are. And I mean even the ones I generally admire who are running around like chickens worrying that the sky is falling in the wake of Assange being arrested yesterday.
It does highlight several things I've noticed more, lately, something called "freedom" as an idol instead of a virtue. How something called "freedom" as in "freedom of the press" seems to have a life in real life that is independent of egalitarian democracy, self-government by free people who have an adequate knowledge of reality. Independent of the things that the First Amendment was created for, especially that one "right" created of an artificial right for an artificial entity "the press". That "freedom of the press" is what people who get paid as members of "the press" put well over that list of things that right was created to serve. Service to egalitarian democracy and self-government is, clearly, secondary in the minds of most journalists, far, far behind what they get paid to do for those artificial entities. I have every confidence that if you brought up that responsibility, the only rational reason that "the press" was given that freedom, the only rational reason that it is important, that they serve self-government by a free people, they would disdain that as a vulgar consideration that was beneath, not only their notice, but beneath their contempt.
I think, as well, and, especially in the supposed journalistic left that there is in their knee jerk support of Assange a knee-jerk anti-Americanism*, the kind of thing that has not only fueled so much lefty scribbling and babbling as journalism, but which has, in the process, discredited, not only their play-left but the only real American left that values the real American liberal tradition, the ones who have struggled to actually make life better for real people. I think that rote anti-Americanism that disdains that obligation of journalism is an expression of a snobbery that doesn't really value democracy (the reason that they've had such an incredible rate of supporting even the most brutal dictators) and, clearly, value even the most obvious scumbag like Assange as one of them.
If legitimate journalists have something to fear in the legal process against Assange, there might be a good reason for that in what he did and how he did it. He certainly isn't doing what real news operations did with the Pentagon Papers, his motivation was nothing like Daniel Ellsberg, I don't think Chelsea Manning is comparable to him, Ellsberg had a sense of responsibility and, more generally, a lot more sense than the young Manning did with all of her issues. Assange used Manning's youth and emotional vulnerability. If jounalists can't make the distinction between what they do and what Assange does, maybe they had better go back to the start and figure out what their real responsibilities are, I mean their responsibilities to equality and democracy and self-government, not to their professional convenience and privilege.
If the government oversteps in its treatment of Assange, that would be another thing, as it possibly was in its treatment of Chelsea Manning. That doesn't mean that what they did doesn't deserve to be prosecuted and punished. From what I've read, they put real lives in danger, not all of them American military or government agents, some of them civilians who they exposed. I can't begin to imagine how many of those private citizens the Putin regime crushed or has information on thanks to that other hero of such degraded journalists, Edward Snowden.
* "Americanism" is another word that has been seriously abused through it meaning different things. The only Americanism that is worthy of respect is that American liberal tradition of egalitarian democracy, economic and social justice, fairness, honesty, civic responsbility. I would guarantee you that easily 9 out of 10 times that something like the word is used by the "free press" it means the kind of rah-rah, nationalistic clap trap that embodies everything wrong with America, best symbolized by Donald Trump groping the American flag before his racist hoard.
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