Commentary about Julian Assange

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Views on Julian Assange have been given by a number of public figures, including journalists, well-known whistleblowers, activists and world leaders. They range from laudatory statements to calls for his execution. Various journalists and free speech advocates have praised Assange for his work and dedication to free speech.[1][2][3] Some former colleagues have criticised his work habits, editorial decisions and personality[cleanup needed].[4][5][6][7] After the 2016 US Presidential election, there was debate about his motives and his ties to Russia.[8][9] After Assange's arrest in 2019, journalists and commenters debated whether Assange was a journalist.[10][11][12][13] Assange has won multiple awards for journalism and publishing.

Pre-2010

In 1997, Assange created the deniable encryption program Rubberhose as a tool for human rights workers who needed to protect sensitive data in the field.[14] Science-fiction writer Bruce Sterling was impressed with the program and wrote that he thought Assange knew he would attract the attention of the authorities and had "figured out that the cops would beat his password out of him, and he needed some code-based way to finesse his own human frailty".[15]

2010

The travelling art installation Anything to Say? by Davide Dormino featuring bronze sculptures of Assange, Snowden, and Manning standing on chairs in Berlin on May Day 2015[16]

In 2010 Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said that Assange was a kindred spirit who disclosed information "on a scale that might really make a difference"[1] and "has shown much better judgment with respect to what he has revealed than the people who kept those items secret inside the government."[17][18]

During an argument in an internal chat, Domscheit-Berg told Assange he was failing as a leader.[19][20][21] After Assange told him he should quit, former WikiLeaks member Herbert Snorrason questioned his judgment.[1] Other departing members who challenged his leadership style included Birgitta Jonsdottir, who acknowledged his importance to the organisation.[1]

In November 2010, an individual from the office of the President of Russia suggested that Assange should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.[22][23] In December 2010 Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who was then the President of Brazil, said "They have arrested him and I don't hear so much as a single protest for freedom of expression". Vladimir Putin, the prime minister of Russia, asked at a press conference "Why is Mr. Assange in prison? Is this democracy?"[24][21] In the same month Julia Gillard, Prime Minister of Australia, described his activities as "illegal"[25] but the Australian Federal Police said he had not broken Australian law.[26] Joe Biden, the vice-president of the United States, was asked whether he saw Assange as closer to a high-tech terrorist than to whistleblower Ellsberg. Biden responded that he "would argue it is closer to being a high-tech terrorist than the Pentagon Papers".[27]

American politicians Mitch McConnell, Newt Gingrich, and Sarah Palin each either referred to Assange as "a high-tech terrorist" or suggested that through publishing US diplomatic traffic he was engaged in terrorism.[28][29][30] Other American and Canadian politicians and media personalities including Tom Flanagan,[31][32] and Mike Huckabee called for his assassination or execution.[33]

Journalists at The Guardian, The Daily Beast, and Salon wrote that Assange is not a journalist,[34][35][36] while other journalists at Salon wrote that he is.[37][38] Italian Rolling Stone magazine called Assange "the person who best embodied a rock'n'roll behaviour" during 2010, describing him a cross between a James Bond villain, a Marvel superhero and a character from The Matrix films. It hailed him as "the exterminator of secrets held by the world's great powers".[39]

2011–2014

Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa

In his 2011 memoir Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website, Domscheit-Berg criticised Assange's character, his attitude towards women, and his handling of the "Collateral Murder" video clip. He wrote that Assange had lied to The New Yorker about decrypting the video clip, and had refused to reimburse WikiLeaks' staffers who worked on the project.[4] Domscheit-Berg described Assange as "freethinking", "energetic" and "brilliant" as well as "paranoid", "power-obsessed" and "monomaniacal".[5][40] In March 2011, Australian author Robert Manne wrote that Assange was "one of the best-known and most-respected human beings on earth".[41] In September 2011, the Guardian, New York Times, El Pais, Der Spiegel, and Le Monde made a joint statement that they condemned and deplored the decision by Julian Assange to publish the unredacted state department cables and WikiLeaks insiders including Birgitta Jonsdottir criticised Assange's handling of the moral issue of the Afghan War Diary and "dictatorial tendencies" inside WikiLeaks.[41][6] The New York Times reporters "came to think of Assange as smart and well-educated, extremely adept technologically, but arrogant, thin-skinned, conspiratorial and oddly credulous."[42]

Writing in the MIT Technology Review, Jason Pontin predicted in early 2011 that "Assange has declared himself the state’s enemy and he will, in all likelihood, be comprehensively destroyed. Wikileaks will vanish. There will be collateral damage to the press and our civil liberties. But the technology of Wikileaks, once imagined, cannot be forgotten and is easily imitated".[15]

In November 2011 Vaughan Smith, founder of the Frontline Club, said he supported Assange "in terms of the manner in which he is delivering us an opportunity to talk about really important stuff. I think it's important that we are encouraged to discuss secrecy in our society. It's good for us".[43] In July 2012, Smith offered his residence in Norfolk for Assange to continue WikiLeaks' operations while in the UK. Smith told the press it was not about whether Assange was right or wrong for what he had done with WikiLeaks, it was about "standing up to the bully" and "whether our country, in these historic times, really was the tolerant, independent, and open place I had been brought up to believe it was and feel that it needs to be".[43][44]

In diplomatic cables from 2011 and 2012, Australian diplomats dismissed claims that the US investigation of Assange was politically motivated. The cables also revealed that the embassy saw complaints about threats to Assange as part of a media campaign "to set the scene for a possible political exception to extradition".[45]

In April 2012, interviewed on Assange's television show World Tomorrow, Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa praised WikiLeaks and told his host "Cheer up! Cheer up! Welcome to the club of the persecuted!"[46] That October, Andy Greenberg said The Architect "sees Assange as driven by his ego and there were points when he felt like Assange was not as focused about the release of significant information as he was on breaking records, releasing leaks that were bigger than the last one."[47]

In 2012 Bob Beckel called for Assange's assassination,[48] and in 2013, Michael Grunwald echoed the call, though Grunwald later apologised for this, saying, "It was a dumb tweet. I'm sorry. I deserve the backlash".[49][50] In April 2013, filmmaker Oliver Stone stated that "Julian Assange did much for free speech and is now being victimised by the abusers of that concept."[51] In 2013, Jemima Khan wrote that when dealing with Assange, "pundits on both the left and the right have become more interested in tribalism than truth. The attacks on him by his many critics in the press have been virulent and highly personal."[7] Vivienne Westwood criticised Khan for ending her support for Assange.[52][7][53] Khan wrote:

"As editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, Assange had created a transparency mechanism to hold governments and corporations to account. I abhor lies and WikiLeaks exposed the most dangerous lies of all – those told to us by our elected governments. WikiLeaks exposed corruption, war crimes, torture and cover-ups. ... If Assange is prosecuted in the US for espionage, I suspect even his most disenchanted former supporters will take to the barricades in his defence. The list of alienated and disaffected allies is long: some say they fell out over redactions, some over broken deals, some over money, some over ownership and control. The roll-call includes Assange's earliest WikiLeaks collaborators, Daniel Domscheit-Berg and "The Architect", the anonymous technical whizz behind much of the WikiLeaks platform. It also features the journalists with whom he worked on the leaked cables.[7]

In early 2014 Andrew O'Hagan, the ghost writer of Assange's autobiography, said that Assange was passionate, funny, lazy, courageous, vain, paranoid, moral, and manipulative.[54][55][56] In November 2014, Spanish Podemos party leader Pablo Iglesias also gave his support to Assange, calling him an activist and a journalist and criticising his persecution.[57]

2015–2018

UK MP Jeremy Corbyn

In July 2015 British Member of Parliament Jeremy Corbyn opposed Assange's extradition to the US,[58] and as Labour Party leader in April 2019 said the British government should oppose Assange's extradition to the US "for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan".[59]

In October 2016 James Ball who had previously worked with Assange, wrote that he had a score to settle with Hillary Clinton and wanted to reassert himself on the world stage, but that he wouldn't knowingly have been a tool of the Russian state.[60] That month Pussy Riot member and Courage Foundation advisory board member[61] Nadya Tolokonnikova criticised Assange for his connections to the Russian government.[62]

In 2017 Barrett Brown said that Assange had acted "as a covert political operative" in the 2016 US election, thus betraying WikiLeaks' focus on exposing "corporate and government wrongdoing". He considered the latter to be "an appropriate thing to do", but that "working with an authoritarian would-be leader to deceive the public is indefensible and disgusting".[63] That May, Laura Poitras said he was admirable, brilliant and flawed.[64] In late May 2017, President Moreno said that Assange was a "hacker", but that he respected his human rights and Assange's asylum in the embassy would continue.[65][66]

2019–present

Australian journalist John Pilger

Days before Assange was arrested, the Guardian's editorial board wrote that "it would be wrong to extradite him" and that "He believes in publishing things that should not always be published – this has long been a difficult divide between the Guardian and him. But he has also shone a light on things that should never have been hidden. When he first entered the Ecuadorian embassy he was trying to avoid extradition to Sweden over allegations of rape and molestation. That was wrong. But those cases have now been closed. He still faces the English courts for skipping bail. If he leaves the embassy, and is arrested, he should answer for that, perhaps in ways that might result in deportation to his own country, Australia."[67][68][69]

After Assange's arrest in 2019, journalists and commenters debated about whether Assange was a journalist.[10][11][12][13] Journalists at the Associated Press,[70] CNN,[71] The Sydney Morning Herald,[72] The LA Times,[73] National Review,[74] The Economist,[75] and The Washington Post[76] argued he was not a journalist. Other journalists at The Independent,[77] The Intercept,[78] the Committee to Protect Journalists,[79] and The Washington Post[80] wrote that he was a journalist or that his actions were still protected. The Washington Post's editorial board wrote that he was "not a free-press hero" or journalist and that he was "overdue for personal accountability."[81]

In December 2019 Australian journalist Mary Kostakidis said that in 2006 she "became fascinated at this young, idealistic Australian, very tech-savvy, who developed a way for whistleblowers to upload data anonymously".[2] In January 2021, Australian journalist John Pilger stated that, were Assange to be extradited, "no journalist who challenges power will be safe".[82] In November 2022, The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El País published an open letter that said "the US government should end its prosecution of Julian Assange for publishing secrets". The letter did not urge the government to drop the case related to the hacking-related charge, though it said that "some of us are concerned" about it, too.[83][84][13]

The journal Ethics and Information Technology published a paper by Patrick D. Anderson in 2020, in which he wrote that Assange’s cypherpunk ethics need to be considered when assessing the work of WikiLeaks. Anderson wrote that "By combining cypherpunk ethics with antiwar values and Enlightenment ideals, Assange developed a truly global conception of cypherpunk philosophy. Within this worldview, crypto defends privacy for the weak, thereby upholding the right to communicate, and promotes transparency for the powerful, thereby limiting the harm caused by bad governance".[85]

In his 2022 book The Trial of Julian Assange: a Story of Persecution, former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Nils Melzer, wrote that Assange's treatment by the United States, Great Britain, Sweden, and Ecuador "exposes a fundamental systemic failure that severely undermines the integrity of our democratic, rule-of-law institutions.".[86]

In 2023 former Trump administration CIA Director Mike Pompeo described Assange in his memoir as "a useful idiot for Russia to exploit."[8] The next month, Louis Menand of New Yorker wrote that "Julian Assange is possibly a criminal. He certainly intervened in the 2016 election, allegedly with Russian help, to damage the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. But top newspaper editors have insisted that what Assange does is protected by the First Amendment, and the Committee to Protect Journalists has protested the charges against him."[9]

Prior to Assange's final appeal against extradition to the United States, Alice Jill Edwards, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, urged the UK to stop his extradition because of concerns he would be subject to torture if extradited.[87]

Honours and awards

See also: Julian_Assange § Honours_and_awards

Assange has been awarded multiple awards for journalism and publishing including the Amnesty International UK Media Award, Economist Award, Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, and more.

References

  1. ^ a b c d Burns, John F.; Somaiya, Ravi (23 October 2010). "WikiLeaks Founder on the Run, Trailed by Notoriety". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 9 February 2023.
  2. ^ a b Hooton, Amanda (6 December 2019). "Love him or hate him or simply don't care, Julian Assange's fight for freedom concerns us all". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 10 May 2021. The 65-year-old is one of only a handful of Australians to have seen Assange since his imprisonment; she has travelled, at her own expense, on her own time, to see him; and recently she committed herself to giving '100 per cent of my attention and resources' to his defence. She's been a supporter since 2006, long before he was famous.
  3. ^ Ball, James; Rusbridger, Alan; Brooke, Heather; Pilger, John; Stephens, Mark; Loach, Ken; Katz, Ian (24 August 2012). "Who is Julian Assange? By the people who know him best". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 17 November 2023.
  4. ^ a b Greenberg, Andy. "Ex-WikiLeaker Claims Defectors Took Control Of Leaks From Assange". Forbes. Retrieved 7 February 2023.
  5. ^ a b Rosenbloom, Joseph. "Blowing the whistle on Assange". Boston.com. Retrieved 7 February 2023.
  6. ^ a b "WikiLeaks publishes full cache of unredacted cables". The Guardian. 2 September 2011. Retrieved 30 January 2023.
  7. ^ a b c d Khan, Jemima (10 June 2021). "Jemima Khan on Julian Assange: how the Wikileaks founder alienated his allies". New Statesman. Retrieved 7 February 2023.
  8. ^ a b Creighton, Adam. "Julian Assange a scoundrel who raped America, says Mike Pompeo in new book Never Give an Inch". The Australian.
  9. ^ a b "When Americans Lost Faith in the News". The New Yorker. 30 January 2023. Retrieved 5 February 2023.
  10. ^ a b Stewart, Emily (12 April 2019). "Is Julian Assange's arrest a threat to freedom of the press? Depends on whom you ask". Vox. Retrieved 30 January 2023.
  11. ^ a b "Opinion | Is Julian Assange a journalist, or is he just an accused thief?". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 30 January 2023.
  12. ^ a b "Opinion | 'Curious Eyes Never Run Dry'". The New York Times. 11 April 2019. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 30 January 2023.
  13. ^ a b c Savage, Charlie (28 November 2022). "Major News Outlets Urge U.S. to Drop Its Charges Against Assange". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 25 February 2023.
  14. ^ Suelette Dreyfus (29 October 2012). "The Idiot Savants' Guide to Rubberhose". Archived from the original on 29 October 2012.
  15. ^ a b Pontin, Jason (26 January 2011). "Secrets and Transparency". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 22 February 2024.
  16. ^ "Snowden among statues unveiled in Berlin". The Local. 2 May 2015. Retrieved 6 September 2021.
  17. ^ "Eight questions for Daniel Ellsberg". The Economist. 31 July 2010.
  18. ^ Burns, John F.; Somaiya, Ravi (23 October 2010). "WikiLeaks Founder Gets Support in Rebuking U.S. on Whistle-Blowers". The New York Times.
  19. ^ Poulsen, Kim Zetter and Kevin. "Unpublished Iraq War Logs Trigger Internal WikiLeaks Revolt". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 7 February 2023.
  20. ^ "WikiLeaks people defect to Openleaks". NBC News. 10 December 2010. Retrieved 7 February 2023.
  21. ^ a b Moses, Asher (10 December 2010). "Anger at 'slave trader' Assange: WikiLeaks loyalists decide to break away". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 7 February 2023.
  22. ^ "Russia: Julian Assange deserves a Nobel Prize". The Jerusalem Post. 12 November 2010. Retrieved 27 October 2019.
  23. ^ Harding, Luke (9 December 2010). "Julian Assange should be awarded Nobel peace prize, suggests Russia". The Guardian. Retrieved 17 March 2014.
  24. ^ "Wikileaks: Brazil President Lula backs Julian Assange". BBC News. 10 December 2010. Retrieved 10 December 2010.
  25. ^ "WikiLeaks acting illegally, says Gillard". 2 December 2010.
  26. ^ Welch, Dylan (17 December 2010). "Julian Assange has committed no crime in Australia: AFP". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 17 March 2014.
  27. ^ MacAskill, Ewen (20 December 2010). "Julian Assange like a hi-tech terrorist, says Joe Biden". The Guardian. Retrieved 17 March 2014.
  28. ^ Curry, Tom (5 December 2010). "McConnell optimistic on deals with Obama". NBC News. Retrieved 17 March 2014.
  29. ^ D'Aprile, Shane (5 December 2010). "Gingrich: Leaks show Obama administration 'shallow,' 'amateurish'". The Hill.
  30. ^ Beckford, Martin (30 November 2010). "Sarah Palin: hunt WikiLeaks founder like al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 10 January 2022. Retrieved 17 March 2014.
  31. ^ "Flanagan regrets WikiLeaks assassination remark". CBC News. 1 December 2010. Retrieved 17 March 2014.
  32. ^ Smith, Charlie (4 December 2010). "Police complaint filed after Tom Flanagan calls for assassination of Wikileaks' Julian Assange". Straight.com. Archived from the original on 11 November 2014. Retrieved 17 March 2014.
  33. ^ Sidiqqui, Haroon; Weaver, Matthew (1 December 2010). "US embassy cables culprit should be executed, says Mike Huckabee". The Guardian. Retrieved 17 March 2014.
  34. ^ "Julian Assange: the whistleblower". The Guardian. 13 July 2010. Retrieved 29 January 2023.
  35. ^ Varadarajan, Tunku (28 July 2010). "WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Is a Fraud". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 29 January 2023.
  36. ^ Lind, Michael (22 December 2010). "Yes, Julian Assange actually is a criminal". Salon. Retrieved 29 January 2023.
  37. ^ "Glenn Greenwald: The NYT spills key military secrets on its front page". 20 April 2008. Archived from the original on 23 December 2010. Retrieved 29 January 2023.
  38. ^ Gant, Scott (20 December 2010). "Why Julian Assange is a journalist". Salon. Retrieved 29 January 2023.
  39. ^ Squires, Nick (14 December 2010). "WikiLeaks: Julian Assange crowned 'Rock Star of the Year' by Italian Rolling Stone". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 10 January 2022. Retrieved 19 March 2014.
  40. ^ "Ex-Wikileaks spokesman blasts Assange – The Local". 12 February 2011. Archived from the original on 12 February 2011. Retrieved 7 February 2023.
  41. ^ a b Manne, Robert (March 2011). "The cypherpunk revolutionary: Julian Assange". The Monthly. Archived from the original on 11 March 2022. Retrieved 23 March 2022.
  42. ^ Keller, Bill; Star, Alexander (2011). Open secrets: WikiLeaks, war and american diplomacy. New York Times. New York [Berkeley, Calif.]: Grove Press Distributed by Publishers Group West. ISBN 978-0-8021-4576-5.
  43. ^ a b Giglio, Mike (2 November 2011). "Julian Assange's Guardian Angel, Frontline Club Founder Vaughan Smith". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 21 March 2014.
  44. ^ Sennott, Charles M. (15 July 2012). "A bold stand in support: Vaughan Smith on Julian Assange". Global Post. Retrieved 17 March 2014.
  45. ^ Dorling, Philip (27 May 2012). "Cables reveal Australia, US focus on Assange". The Age. Retrieved 10 September 2023.
  46. ^ "When Wikileaks founder Julian Assange met Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa". The Daily Telegraph. 20 June 2012. Archived from the original on 21 June 2012.
  47. ^ Perlroth, Nicole (27 October 2012). "One On One: Andy Greenberg, Author, "This Machine Kills Secrets"". The New York Times. Retrieved 7 February 2023.
  48. ^ "Fox News' Bob Beckel calls for 'Ilegally' [sic] killing Assange: 'A dead man can't leak stuff'". HuffPost. 7 December 2012. Retrieved 17 March 2014.
  49. ^ "Time correspondent under fire for tweet suggesting Assange be killed in drone strike". Yahoo! News. 18 August 2013. Retrieved 21 October 2021.
  50. ^ Davidson, Amy (18 August 2013). "Michael Grunwald and the Assange precedent problem". The New Yorker. Retrieved 17 March 2014.
  51. ^ Child, Ben (11 April 2013). "Oliver Stone meets Julian Assange and criticises new WikiLeaks films". The Guardian. Retrieved 10 May 2021.
  52. ^ "Vivienne Westwood Criticises Jemima Khan Over Julian Assange". British Vogue. 28 February 2013. Retrieved 7 February 2023.
  53. ^ "Jemima Khan denounces "cultish devotion" to WikiLeaks' Assange". Firstpost. 7 February 2013. Retrieved 7 February 2023.
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  55. ^ "Julian Assange 'couldn't bear to reveal his own secrets', says ghostwriter". www.telegraph.co.uk. 21 February 2014. Retrieved 8 February 2023.
  56. ^ "'Paranoid, vain and jealous' – the secret life of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange". www.telegraph.co.uk. 22 February 2014. Retrieved 8 February 2023.
  57. ^ "Podemos denuncia en Londres la 'terrible persecución' que sufre Assange". Terra España (in Spanish). 8 November 2014. Archived from the original on 16 August 2016.
  58. ^ "Jeremy Corbyn: 'I think we have to think in terms of the disillusioned who didn't vote'". New Statesman. 29 July 2015. Retrieved 27 October 2019.
  59. ^ "UK's Labour Party calls for PM to prevent Assange's extradition". Al Jazeera. 12 April 2019.
  60. ^ Ball, James (23 October 2016). "Inside The Strange, Paranoid World Of Julian Assange". BuzzFeed. Retrieved 10 February 2023.
  61. ^ Addley, Esther (18 November 2014). "Pussy Riot members join whistleblower foundation backed by Julian Assange". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 16 February 2023.
  62. ^ Stern, Marlow (27 October 2016). "Pussy Riot's Nadya Tolokno: Julian Assange Is 'Connected with the Russian Government'". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 16 February 2023.
  63. ^ Mackey, Robert (15 November 2017). "Julian Assange's Hatred of Hillary Clinton Was No Secret. His Advice to Donald Trump Was". The Intercept. Retrieved 3 February 2023.
  64. ^ Wiener, Jon (5 May 2017). "Laura Poitras on Julian Assange: 'Admirable, Brilliant, and Flawed'". ISSN 0027-8378. Retrieved 8 February 2023.
  65. ^ "New Ecuador president says Assange a 'hacker,' but can stay at embassy". Reuters. 29 May 2017. Retrieved 16 February 2023.
  66. ^ "New Ecuador president says 'hacker' Assange can stay at embassy". France 24. 30 May 2017. Retrieved 16 February 2023.
  67. ^ "The Guardian view on Julian Assange: it would be wrong to extradite him". The Guardian. 9 April 2019. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 4 February 2023.
  68. ^ "Villain or victim of a smear campaign? Julian Assange's complicated history – National | Globalnews.ca". Global News. Retrieved 4 February 2023.
  69. ^ "Assange Arrest – Part 1: 'So Now He's Our Property'". Media Lens. 16 April 2019. Retrieved 4 February 2023.
  70. ^ "Julian Assange is not a journalist". The Associated Press. 17 April 2019. Retrieved 30 January 2023.
  71. ^ Ghitis, Frida (11 April 2019). "Julian Assange is an activist, not a journalist". CNN. Retrieved 30 January 2023.
  72. ^ Greste, Peter (12 April 2019). "Julian Assange is no journalist: don't confuse his arrest with press freedom". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 30 January 2023.
  73. ^ Casagrande, June (2 May 2019). "Column: A Word, Please: Julian Assange should not be considered a journalist working for the public". Burbank Leader. Retrieved 30 January 2023.
  74. ^ "Julian Assange Is Not a Journalist". National Review. 12 April 2019. Retrieved 30 January 2023.
  75. ^ "Julian Assange: journalistic hero or enemy agent?". The Economist. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 30 January 2023.
  76. ^ "Opinion | Assange is a spy, not a journalist. He deserves prison". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 30 January 2023.
  77. ^ "Newspaper editor who 'spectacularly' fell out with Julian Assange says WikiLeaks founder should not be prosecuted for 'doing what journalists do'". The Independent. 1 January 2021. Retrieved 30 January 2023.
  78. ^ Lee, Micah (30 September 2020). "Crumbling Case Against Assange Shows Weakness of "Hacking" Charges Related to Whistleblowing". The Intercept. Retrieved 30 January 2023.
  79. ^ Mahoney, Robert (11 December 2019). "For the sake of press freedom, Julian Assange must be defended". Committee to Protect Journalists. Retrieved 30 January 2023.
  80. ^ "Perspective | The U.S. says Julian Assange 'is no journalist.' Here's why that shouldn't matter". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 30 January 2023.
  81. ^ "Opinion | Julian Assange is not a free-press hero. And he is long overdue for personal accountability". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 30 January 2023.
  82. ^ "Veteran reporter John Pilger says if Julian Assange extradited to US 'no journalist who challenges power will be safe'". The Independent. 3 January 2021. Retrieved 12 May 2021.
  83. ^ Singh, Kanishka (28 November 2022). "Leading media outlets urge U.S. to end prosecution of Julian Assange". Reuters.
  84. ^ "An open letter from editors and publishers: Publishing is not a Crime". The Guardian. 28 November 2022. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 5 February 2023.
  85. ^ Anderson, Patrick D. (1 September 2021). "Privacy for the weak, transparency for the powerful: the cypherpunk ethics of Julian Assange". Ethics and Information Technology. 23 (3): 295–308. doi:10.1007/s10676-020-09571-x. ISSN 1572-8439. Retrieved 20 December 2023.
  86. ^ von Hein, Matthias (20 April 2021). "The case of Julian Assange: Rule of law undermined – DW – 04/20/2021". dw.com. Retrieved 19 September 2023.
  87. ^ Newman, Ed (6 February 2024). "UN special rapporteur urges UK to halt Julian Assange's extradition, citing torture risk". www.radiohc.cu. Retrieved 7 February 2024.
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