Julian Assange

Julian Assange is an Australian journalist who has been captive for over a decade in defense of free speech and a free press. He is currently being held captive in England waiting to see if he will be extradited to the United States for prosecution.

Recently a bipartisan group of Congressional representatives sent a letter to President Biden calling for the US to end its extradition request of Assange. The US Ambassador to Australia, Caroline Kennedy, has stated there could be a resolution that will free Julian Assange.

Assange is the founder of WikiLeaks, a media organization that published hundreds of classified government documents as authentic journalists often do. The US Government is charging him as a criminal under the Espionage Act for publishing these documents even though Assange has never worked for the government. If the Espionage Act is allowed to be made so broad that it can be used to attack journalists who never worked for the US Government, the institution of journalism will never be the same again.

Many believe this is precisely the point of the persecution of Assange.

Matt Taibbi has spoken of how “journalists” today are something different; they are not of the same vocation as Assange. Perhaps it is so easy for this new breed to defend governments who throw Assange away to life-in-prison or even death. They can do so because they are not like him; they are not authentic journalists. It’s almost as if they want him jailed or dead so then they don’t have to face what they are or have become, which is basically propaganda parrots for the powers that be, rather than truth tellers seeking to hold authorities accountable.

They are, as Honest Media calls them, #DisinfoDupes. Assange is a real journalist who has risked his own safety to reveal information to the public.