Dear Editor,
If you happened to be watching the news the other day, you saw Julian Assange carried out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London by the police. Depending on who you want to believe, his crimes are either an outstanding warrant on a questionable sexual assault charge or his timely (or un-timely if you are a Democrat) release of stolen Hilary Clinton/DNC e-mails or his alleged conspiracy to hack U.S. Government computer systems.
Now, if we sort of look at this through the squinted eyes of the cynic, you might see that the sexual assault charge turns out to be a scam orchestrated probably during the Bush presidency to finally shut this guy up, so that charge will probably fail, which leaves the whole Hillary/Democrats e-mail deal and the alleged hacking conspiracy.
Now, all that being said, what I find interesting is the current outrage or actually the complete lack of outrage by the liberal left media over this current prosecution. After all, isn’t Assange a journalist and entitled to the same protections as those enjoyed by the New York Times reporters that published the stolen Pentagon papers in the 60s or the Washington Post reporters that published the stolen classified documents a couple of years ago? No. Apparently not.
Apparently the current standard for determining whether an individual that publishes stolen information is a journalist is whether that stolen information exposes or embarrasses a Republican or his (or her) administration or whether it embarrass or exposes a Democrat or his (or her) administration. Apparently, If an individual publishes stolen documents or classified information that supports a liberal agenda, then that individual becomes a Pulitzer prize-winning Journalist overnight.
On the other hand, if that individual publishes something stolen that attacks the liberal agenda, then that individual certainly is not a journalist but is a criminal worthy of the full weight of prosecution. If that all seems odd to you or even hypocritical, welcome to modern mainstream journalism.
My father was the City Editor of a major daily newspaper for the better part of 60 years. I grew up reading accurate reporting and good writing on a daily basis. His standard was rigid. “Get it right before anything else.” Not any longer. Formerly-great papers like The Washington Post and The New York Times have stopped being sources of objective information and reporting but have become political operatives for the Democratic Party and that is a great tragedy.
When The Washington Post announces that they are dedicating 50 reporters to do nothing but generate negative stories about the Trump administration regardless of truth or accuracy and no one bats an eyelash, things have gone too far. When their headlines are questions, e.g. “Did Trump hire illegals at Mar a Lago?” yet when you read the story it turns out to be some thirdhand gossip that some reporter heard from some guy he doesn’t know in a trench coat behind a bar in Georgetown at 3:00am, then clearly, journalism as the world has understood it for a century or more is surely dead.
The Post, along with other news outlets, is currently being sued for their false reporting of an encounter that a young man had during a demonstration at the White House. In their reporting they maligned this young man, falsely accused him and, essentially destroyed his character for an incident in which he was completely innocent. Was this an accident? A simple mistake? No. They were in possession of the very video tape that proved conclusively that their reporting and characterizations were not simple mistakes at all but willful lies. It will be an interesting case when it gets to court.
Usually newspapers are held to a couple of simple legal standards. If a person is a public figure, he or she is generally fair game and can be attacked at will and even if the newspaper is wrong about something that damages an individual, they have to be proven to have acted with willful malice. That is, they knew what they wrote was wrong when they wrote it and they did it intentionally with the intent to injure or defame. Those are usually tough cases to make in court which is why you don’t see liability cases succeed very often.
In this case, though, I think The Post and CNN and others may well be in trouble. The young man in question is clearly not a public figure . The Post and all the rest knew the reporting was a lie because they had the video, and, most importantly, they have a two-year history of publishing any bit of nonsense and conjecture they could find to make Trump look bad. Why is that important? Because the young man was wearing a Trump hat at the time.
That will be the nexus that the lawyers will use to get the settlements that they will buy their new Gulfstreams with. They will be able to make the obvious and compelling case that The Post et al used this young man as a prop and destroyed his reputation for the simple reason that they saw an opportunity to make Trump and his supporters look bad. This time they got caught red-handed and it’s going to cost them.
Which brings us back to Assange. Is Assange a journalist ? Absolutely. You may not like him and he may be a slimeball but for sure, by any objective standard, he publishes exactly the same type of information that The Times and The Post do in the same public domain, so if they are journalists then so is he.
As such, I suggest that if the case against him succeeds and he goes to trial or even ends up in jail for publishing the Clinton and DNC e-mails then the New York Times reporters that published the Pentagon Papers and the Washington Post reporters that published the classified documents a year ago and everybody that published the Panama Papers better lawyer up right now because you guys may well end up in the cells next to his and deservedly so.
Honestly, in hopes of restoring the reputation and integrity of a great institution and of all honest old school journalists everywhere, I hope that actually happens. Where is Charles Krauthammer when you need him?
Steven Johnson
