The ‘crime’ of investigative journalism

Shelley Walia
Emeritus Professor, Dept of English and Cultural Studies, Panjab University

Huge demonstrations outside the Ecuadorian embassy in London on April 5, a few days before Julian Assange was expelled from asylum and arrested by the British police evidently indicate that his detention by the British Government is unlawful, inflammatory and offensive to the world of journalism. Rafael Correa, previous President of Ecuador, had granted asylum to Assange to rescue him from extradition to the US where he could have faced death sentence. But Lenin Moreno, the current head of state, took it away on the charge of ‘repeated violations to international conventions and daily-life protocols’. 

The moot point here is whether Assange is guilty of publishing classified documents on American conduct in Syria, Venezuela and Chagos Island, its war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, including the eye-opening video capturing the cold-blooded massacre of 12 civilians by American soldiers in Baghdad. And, whether his detention in the Belmarsh maximum-security prison, reserved for extremely dangerous criminals, is well deserved in a country that stridently proclaims its unimpeachable liberal and democratic traditions. 

Though Sweden dropped investigations against Assange in 2012 and President Obama refused to ask for his extradition on the ground that it might set the wrong precedent of undemocratic control of investigative journalism, Trump has relentlessly gone hammer and tongs after Assange. It is a common practice that information about specific culpable acts of the State is often used by the press, thereby making the traditional news media like the Guardian, New York Times or Washington Post as guilty of circulating incriminatory news, such as WikiLeaks. It would be unwarranted to distinguish one from the other. The hostility which is read into the WikiLeaks case is apparently not applied uniformly to the conventional media. “Reporting on leaked materials, including reporting on classified information, is an essential role of American journalism,” as argued by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This is done customarily by journalists, keeping in view public interest and, therefore, a standard practice of journalism.

Any punishment to Assange by Britain or the US consequently will discourage whistleblowers from divulging serious lapses of the State. The defence of critical thinking and freedom of the press would thereby stand watered down.  

Which brings me to the point of divergence in the views on the extradition of Assange to the US on the basis of a non-crime that is investigative in nature and for which he is being charged with conspiracy to access a computer without authorisation to obtain classified information that in all likelihood could be used against the interests of the nation. As per information provided by Chelsea Manning, WikiLeaks provided 90,000 ‘war-related significant activity reports’ about Afghanistan, 4,00,000 about Iraq, 800 Guantánamo detainee ‘assessment briefs’ and 2,50,000 US State Department cables, all of which were published in 2010 and 2011.  

The indictment of Assange in the US contends that he facilitated Manning to crack a password to make it harder to discover Manning as the source of the confidential information. Interestingly, no further charges under the Espionage Act have been be brought by the US as that would carry a death penalty which would, in turn, prevent Assange’s extradition from Britain, owing to the envisaged severity of the punishment.

The ball now is in the British court which is in a position to impede the extradition on the grounds of torture or other degrading inhuman treatment or, alternatively, let Assange fall into the US entrapment. Evidently, there are serious possibilities of violation of human rights under the Republican dispensation, going by the handling of Manning who was kept in solitary confinement along with the unbecoming everyday body inspection in a state of undress. 

Political motives behind the request for extradition make the whole case null and void, making Britain’s role in handing over Assange to the US outrageous and in contravention of human rights. The ‘extraterritorial reach’ of the US must be prevented from undermining the autonomy of the individual or a government that comes in the way of global American interests. Such actions, states Chomsky in a recent interview, are clearly intended to silence a journalist who was relying on information that people in power would hate the multitudes to get a whiff of, underscoring how Assange’s prosecution is similar to the incarceration of Lulu in Brazil or Antonio Gramsci in Italy under Mussolini’s regime with the aim of restraining dissidence of any nature. Gramsci’s prosecutor emphatically declared, “We have to silence this voice for 20 years. Can't let it speak.”

“Libertarian ideal of radical transparency” that explicitly underscores the ethical code of sincere journalism, is therefore, swept under the carpet.  Human rights and the savage rule of law clash and in a stroke the very sanctity of legal asylum sanctioned by the United Nations covenant signed by the ‘democracies’ of the West, reveals the unacceptable elements of the state machinery. The picture of Assange being dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy by burly British cops shamed and angered the fair and the just. And all, owing to a ‘crime’ in journalism when many state officials guilty of military transgressions against human rights, of butchery or of torturing the innocent and the untried go scot-free. Exposure of lies or genocide is no reason for bestowing state honour when it goes against the state policy. 

The truth that Assange revealed to the world should never have been concealed. Declares Assange, “People have a right to know and a right to question and challenge power. That’s true democracy.”  How then is his Wikileaks an unlawful publication when the drive is to scrutinise the state mechanism? Journalists like Assange  need to be acknowledged as empowering agencies jolting the public out of its compliant stupor, as icons of impetus to not back down or be silenced, but to speak truth to power if only to prevent an irreparable damage to the inviolability of honest reporting.