Message #46710

[Jitendra Hydonus]

Julian Assange is finally free – but what does his case mean for the media?

in-chief   Katharine Viner, editor-in-chief
 
On Wednesday, Julian Assange walked free. After 12 years of confinement, the WikiLeaks founder accepted a deal to plead guilty to one count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified US national defence information.

Reporters from our Guardian Australia team and foreign affairs correspondent Helen Davidson were at the centre of a whirlwind 24 hours during which Assange was released from jail, appeared at a courthouse in the remote US outpost of Saipan and returned to Australia a free man. Helen’s dispatch from the courtroom captured the emotional intensity of the moment when Assange’s 14-year legal saga came to an abrupt end.

As our editorial made clear, Assange should never have been charged with espionage. And while it is clearly good news that he has been released, the charge for which he pleaded guilty is alarming for those invested in the cause of press freedom.

The WikiLeaks trove, published in collaboration with news outlets including the Guardian, revealed appalling abuses by the US and other governments: abuses that would not otherwise have been exposed, and for which no one has been held liable. The act under which Assange was charged allows no defence in the public interest. This theoretically means that future US administrations – including a potential Donald Trump White House – could use the result of the Assange case as encouragement to pursue the press.

The years since Assange first entered the Ecuadorian embassy in London have not been good for press freedom. Journalists are in physical and legal peril across the world. This week, we published several other stories about threats to the press. They included an investigation, in collaboration with other media groups and Forbidden Stories, into the deaths of more than 100 journalists in Gaza since the war began.

We also covered the beginning of the closed-door trial of the Wall Street Journal’s Evan Gershkovich, who is accused by Russia of spying, charges that he, his employer and the US government have described as politically motivated. And, in India, the novelist Arundhati Roy, an outspoken critic of the prime minister, Narendra Modi, is being prosecuted under anti-terrorism legislation for comments made about Kashmir in 2010. Amrit Dhillon reported on a letter signed by more than 200 academics, activists and journalists protesting against the decision.

With the far right on the rise, and the spectre of a Trump presidency on the horizon after the alarming TV debate with Joe Biden on Thursday night, things could get worse for the free press. It’s vital we stand up for it.