© Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images
In my article,
Avoiding Assange, a month ago, right after the first US indictment was issued, I addressed two diversionary arguments that I knew would be used by those who want to hide their complicity with American imperialism under leftish cover - that is, those who don't want to be seen as endorsing the United States government's prosecution of Assange for, and intimidation of every journalist in the world from, reporting the embarrassing truth about American war crimes, but who also don't really want to stand in the way of Assange's extradition to the United States.
The first of those arguments was the denial that the USG's charge against Assange posed any threat to press freedom - that it was just about "hacking," not publishing.
Both the New York Times (NYT) and the Washington Post (WaPo) pretended to believe in, and celebrated, the Trump administration's meticulous threading of the legal/constitutional needle to avoid endangering freedom of speech and the press. For the
NYT: "The administration has begun well by charging Mr. Assange with an indisputable crime...not with publishing classified government information, but with stealing it, skirting - for now - critical First Amendment questions." For the
WaPo, the indictment was "not the defeat for civil liberties of which his defenders mistakenly warn," but "a victory for the rule of law."
Well, that argument and pretence have now disappeared with the USG's superseding indictment that uses the Espionage Act to threaten Assange with 175 years in prison.
Even the most Assange-hating liberal media personalities and institutions - from the NYT and WaPo to MSNBC and the Guardian - have no way to deny the threat this poses to freedom of the press. As Alan Rusbridger, Assange-hating former editor of the Assange-hating
Guardian,
recognizes, the US indictment is an attempt "to criminalise things journalists regularly do as they receive and publish true information given to them by sources or whistleblowers." And, for the
NYT Editorial Board, the present indictment no longer "skirts," but "aims at the heart of the First Amendment."
Comment: During the subsequent press conference Trump supported the Brexit process: