On Assange's homecoming: “I don’t want to be the witch at the christening”  - Peter Hartcher, SMH Editor

The Assange Saga gets more and more like something written by Tolkein, full of oligarchal monsters trying to kill tall heroic white-haired elves, and jealous witches and wizards lurking in dark towers of power. I especially liked the scene at the airport on 26 June 2024, when the white-haired elf, having escaped the dark towers of Belmarsh, kissed his earthly partner and twirled her around, while in the distance, hundreds of humble Australian hobbits cheered and clapped.

Peter Hartcher, Sydney Morning Herald International Editor, sounded unimpressed, though, when he spoke on ABC news Wednesday night 26 June 2024 following the Wikileaks Press Conference, which was broadcast on ABC Australia. [1]

He poked a bitter-sounding kind of fun at Assange and Assange’s supporters, indeed at much of the Australian mainstream media, for covering the event in a manner he compared to a visit by the Queen in the 1950s, or indeed, Taylor Swift.

“Um, he's received a bit of a folk hero’s welcome. Interesting to see that so many TV networks ran live tracking maps of his plane as it approached Canberra and then showed cut live to him emerging from the plane. There's been a sort of a frenzy. It's a bit like, I don't know, the Queen's visit to Australia and first visit in 1954, or Taylor Swift turning up or something like that […]”

Here, ignoring the unprecedented, alarming, globally deplored, misuse of an old US espionage law to prosecute someone outside America for revealing shocking American war-crimes perpetrated internationally by a country that is not even a signatory to the ICC, Peter Hartcher used a string of words to repackage Assange as a common criminal – ‘a convicted felon,’ ‘the Ned Kelly effect,’ ‘a crook,’ ‘defying the authorities.’ Hartcher:

“[…] although he returns to Australia a convicted felon as a result of pleading guilty in a court today, a US court in Saipan, to a charge of Espionage, he's obviously managing to transcend that in the media and presumably some of the public's opinion - a bit of the Ned Kelly effect. I imagine where you might be a crook but you're still a bit of a hero, for having defied the authorities.[…] ”

Hartcher bolstered these words by insisting on Assange’s guilty plea, never acknowledging that Assange was choosing between freedom and imprisonment and probably life and death. He did not give Assange due credit for having bravely, with great self-discipline, endured shocking conditions for about 12 years, and notably the last 5 years, whilst trying hopelessly to get a fair trial in a rotten system.

It just all sounded like sour grapes.  I thought it made Peter Hartcher look very small next to Julian Assange, who appears a bigger man, in every way.

Ignoring Assange’s membership of a journalists’ union from 2010, [2] and his receipt of multiple prestigious awards for journalism, including the Walkley Award, Hartcher repeatedly asserted that Julian Assange is not a 'proper' journalist, relying on the tired and debunked trope that Assange failed to take necessary professional precautions to protect people from harm when releasing information. (He gave no example but the usual example is a purported disagreement, about redacting names, involving Assange, The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel. However, John Goetz of De Spiegel substantially contradicted this account at Assange's 2020 extradition hearing.) [3]

Hartcher then undermined his own case by begrudgingly admitting that the US Judge in the Mariana Islands had stated that no one had been harmed by Assange’s work – that is, the publication of over ten million documents and associated analyses.

“The second point that struck me was that despite [Assange’s perforce going along with the charges of conspiracy] that and in contravention perhaps of that or exculpation of that, he maintained again that he was doing the work of a journalist. He used those words in working as a journalist, I did these things. Uh, now that is a hotly contested claim. It is the claim which he has used, and his supporters and lawyers have used, from the beginning to give his work legitimacy. It's a definition that many journalists fundamentally object to, but they were the two points that struck me today.” (Hartcher)

It seems to me that the journalism ‘claim’ is really only still hotly contested, in a cold kind of way, by servants of the deep state, notably journalists and editors who protect it through self-censorship, with a view so narrow that they cannot see, hear, or speak of evil by their masters – the ‘authorities.’  No-one would question Assange’s form of journalism if it were not for those professionally ‘professional journalists’ continuously issuing articles creating doubt.  Doubt, or dust in your eyes and confusion, is what elite criminals rely on, when their deeds come to light.

Ethical professional journalists exercise due diligence to protect sources. So that religious leaders, political dissidents, other sources US intelligence weren't put at risk. Now as the US has admitted, uh, they can't find any of their sources who were killed or harmed as a result of those disclosures. That's that that's seems to be the fact and that's a good thing. However, it doesn't seem that Julian Assange undertook that due diligence in the first place. Other journalists, real journalists, weren't prosecuted because they did the due diligence, protected sources and protected National Security.” (Hartcher)

Hartcher seemed to miss one of the main points of Assange’s long imprisonment, which is that Assange absolutely refused to rat on his sources, so could not make ‘deals’ with the authorities.

The concept of journalism as a kind of mainstream ‘rules-based-order’ is increasingly challenged because of the misuse of the checks and balances mainstream journalism credits itself with, which has allowed war-crimes to be hidden, and speech to be muzzled.

Hartcher showed no awareness of the irony where elites who spy constantly on ordinary citizens (as revealed by Edward Snowdon) abuse the Espionage Act to accuse Assange of spying when he publishes evidence of their crimes.

Peter Hartcher ignored Assange’s strikingly innovative and very protective publishing system for informants/whistleblowers, and its extensive global reach, and groundbreaking use of electronic systems. Assange could probably have avoided or shortened his imprisonment if he had given up his sources, as requested by Trump associates, for instance. [4]

Hartcher went on to deny that 'proper' journalists are threatened by the misuse of the US Espionage Law in this case. He implied that they have nothing to fear as long as they practise journalism according to the definition he endorses.  He is an editor of major Australian legacy media organ.  Read Manufacturing Consent :

[The mass media] "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion," by means of the propaganda of communication.  (Herman, Edward S.; Chomsky, Noam. Manufacturing Consent. New York: Pantheon Books. p. 306, cited by Wikipedia.) 

Hartcher referred to war-crimes being investigated in Australia, but made no mention of the secret trials and the interpretation of 'public interest' as the interest of the Crown, where questioning orders, regardless of their criminality, is forbidden – as in the David McBride case – and ‘whistleblowing’ is harshly punished.

 "The second point I'd make is it hasn't had a chilling effect obviously on investigative journalism in Australia.  Not at all. War crimes have been disclosed and investigated and are now being prosecuted in the Australian system because of investigative reporting by the ABC's Chris Masters and the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age’s Nick McKenzie. […] Robert Smith and a range of other Australian Special Forces soldiers, have been investigated, and we know there's a whole saga there. Are those Australian journalists intimidated? Have there been prosecuted? The answer is no. Professional journalists acting ethically, have, can, and will continue to publish. This is an important distinction that I think many journalists are keen to make. And although I, you know, as I say, I don't want to be the witch at the christening, but I think it's an important point for professional journalists to note. (Hartcher.)

Apparently, he still seriously endorses the Russiagate state conspiracy theories, (the Podesta documents), and presumably thinks that Wikileaks should have held off publishing them so that Hilary Clinton could win.  Why should such people be protected? They spy on the rest of us.

More about Assange-not-a-proper-journalist:

“[…] wouldn't describe him as a journalist. I would describe him as an activist in his work as an activist, uh to disclose documents, um to publish secrets […] in 2016 he published documents that according to the US were stolen from John Podesta [in] Hillary Clinton's Democrat campaign, stole documents, the Russians stole documents supply them to WikiLeaks,  and were published by Julian Assange and those documents then, according to Hillary Clinton, impaired her campaign for the presidency and assisted Donald Trump that sort of disclosure and activity.” (Hartcher.)

The message we are supposed to receive seems to be that the danger to the press does not come from US and the UK, but from Assange.

[…] “And call for the press, the media in Australia and elsewhere, now to unite to get him a pardon to remove what they've described, what Jennifer Robinson described, as a dangerous precedent for all journalists., […]  I hate to be the witch at the christening here […] but I'd point to a couple of things. (Hartcher.)

The Assange Saga gets more and more like something written by Tolkein, full of oligarchal monsters trying to kill tall heroic white-haired elves, and jealous witches and wizards lurking in dark towers of power. I especially liked the scene at the airport on 26 June 2024, when the white-haired elf, having escaped the dark towers of Belmarsh, kissed his earthly partner and twirled her around, while in the distance, hundreds of humble Australian hobbits cheered and clapped.

NOTES

 [1] The quotes were edited from an electronic transcript from comments by Peter Hartcher, SMH International Editor, ABC News, after Wikileaks Press Conference 26 June 2024

 [2]  “WikiLeaks’ editor-in-chief Julian Assange will today (Thursday) be given his Media Alliance union card, confirming that he is a member in good standing with the Australian journalists’ union, the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance.” ACTU Media Release, Dec 2010. https://www.actu.org.au/media-release/julian-assange-receives-alliance-media-pass-unions-offer-support-for-wikileaks/

Assange’s Melbourne lawyer Rob Stary QC will accept Assange’s new media card from ACTU President Ged Kearney at a ceremony in Melbourne outside the office of Fairfax Media newspaper The Age.

 [3]"Award-winning investigative journalist John Goetz testified at Assange’s extradition hearing yesterday morning from Berlin, blowing out of the water US government claims that Assange had failed to redact names from US classified documents, placing the lives of US government informants at risk.

Goetz, Head of Investigations for German public broadcaster NDR, was a journalist at Der Spiegel when it partnered with WikiLeaks in 2010. He travelled to London in June of that year where he worked with Assange and senior journalists from the Guardian and New York Times on what later became known as the Afghan War Diaries." https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/17/assa-s17.html

 [4] Peter Beaumont, “Trump 'associates' offered Assange pardon in return for emails source, court hears, The Guardian, 19 September 2020.  https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/sep/18/trump-offered-julian-assange-pardon-in-return-for-democrat-hacking-source-court-told