By Joel Simon
 |
|
Regardless
of whether WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange is considered a journalist, he
is part of the new global information ecosystem Kirsty Wigglesworth/Associated
Press
|
As technology
changes how news is gathered and delivered, should journalism continue to be
sharply distinguished from activism and other kinds of free speech?
At
a March 2013 meeting in Doha, Qatar, in which press freedom activists gathered
to develop a strategy for responding to the violence in Syria, a heated
discussion broke out about what constitutes journalism in an environment in
which professional reporters work alongside a new generation of online
communicators who dub themselves “media activists.”
Using social
media and public platforms like YouTube, these activists have provided
firsthand accounts of the fighting, the toll, and daily life in a war-ravaged
country but make no claim to objectivity. Some are fairly journalistic in their
approach and others essentially propagandists for the rebel forces. A few are
armed and participate in combat.
To
give a few additional examples from other parts of the world, in China, a
leading blogger, Zhou Shuguang, who uses the online moniker
Zola (a nod to the French writer-journalist), has traveled around the country
with a video camera documenting injustice but insists, “I don’t know what
journalism is.
I just record what I witness.” In Vietnam, a blogger named Nguyen Van Hai who took a similar approach
was given a 12-year jail sentence. In Turkey, while mainstream media ignored
the Gezi Park protesters, activists using Twitter and other social media became
the essential source of independent news. Even New York police seeking to
control access to the Occupy Wall Street protests struggled to differentiate
between accredited journalists and sympathetic citizens who used smartphones to
disseminate information to the public.
In
an era in which technology has changed everything about the way news is
gathered and delivered, is it possible to draw a line between journalism,
activism, and other kinds of speech? And is it necessary to do so? The answer
is extremely significant for several reasons.
First, because it directly
affects the way journalists themselves understand their role. Are the rights of
journalists distinct from others who provide information and commentary? Is the
ability of journalists to perform their role as media professionals dependent
on preserving some sort of distinction? Second, because it goes to larger
questions about the kind of global information environment that would best
preserve and even expand the accountability, oversight, and transparency that
have historically been the function of independent media.
The
advent of blogs and online media raised new questions. As the volume,
complexity, and speed of information increased, the process of defining
journalism has become more and more unwieldy. The trend has accelerated in the
last several years, with the explosion of social media and its increasing use
to accomplish basic journalism: documenting events and disseminating
information to the public.
Some
traditional journalists are deeply uncomfortable with the blurring of lines,
which they feel undermines the integrity of the profession while also making
coverage of conflict more dangerous. NBC’s chief foreign correspondent Richard
Engel told the U.N. Security Council during its July 2013 briefing on
journalist security, “Protecting journalists these days is hard, perhaps harder
than ever, because one has to tackle the question of who is a journalist and
who is an activist in a way that never existed before.”
Engel
lamented the ways in which the advent of social media has eviscerated the
special status that international correspondents once enjoyed, eliminating
distinctions between professional journalists, activists, and “rebels with
cameras” and “state broadcasters” who are “fundamentally different from
journalists.” “If one cannot or will not write an article that goes against
one’s cause, then one is not a journalist and does not deserve to be treated
like one,” Engel explained. He proposed that the diplomats on the Security
Council make a distinction between the broad defense of freedom of expression
and the defense of “dedicated and trained professionals who take risks to
deliver the kind of information council members need to make their decisions.”
But
inviting governments to differentiate journalists from non-journalists would
set a dangerous precedent. Many governments—Turkey, Egypt, China, and
Venezuela, to cite some examples—seem to believe “journalists” support
government policies while “activists” oppose them. Journalists and media
freedom organizations have long resisted any effort by governments or
government-controlled bodies like the United Nations to define who is and who
is not a journalist, arguing that such a distinction is tantamount to
licensing, which is anathema to the journalism profession.
Indeed,
journalists themselves are divided on the issue, with opinion writers tending
to take a more expansive view. The New York Times’s Nick Kristof argues that a
press freedom group needs to be “as broad as possible when thinking about its
mission and role. It would be pusillanimous if they helped only full-time
journalists and let everyone else take the heat,” he argued. “You need to speak
up for everyone like that even if you don’t call them journalists.”
In
the last three decades, the way in which journalists define their role has
evolved considerably. Defending the human rights of persecuted colleagues, once
viewed as activist special pleading, is now widely accepted. But today,
precisely because the distinction between journalists and nonjournalists has
broken down so dramatically, journalists are confronting a new dilemma: Should
journalists more broadly embrace the freedom-of-expression cause? Or should
they speak out—as Engel suggests—only in defense of their professional
colleagues?
This
debate played out in dramatic fashion beginning in April 2010, when WikiLeaks
released a video provocatively labeled “Collateral Murder.” The video showed
the crew of a U.S. helicopter gunship in Iraq opening fire on a group of Iraqi
men who had been identified as insurgents, some of them armed. A journalist and
media assistant from Reuters who were with the group were killed. A van that
tried to rescue the wounded media worker also came under fire. Two children in
the van were wounded, and their father, the driver, was killed.
WikiLeaks was
co-founded by Julian Assange in 2006, with the goal of making public documents
of “political, ethical, diplomatic, or historical significance,” a description
that of course covers just about everything. But it wasn’t until the
“Collateral Murder” video that WikiLeaks garnered widespread public attention.
The video—which Reuters had tried to obtain unsuccessfully from the Pentagon
under the Freedom of Information Act—was provided to WikiLeaks by a disgruntled
low-level military intelligence analyst named Bradley Manning. Manning also
shared with WikiLeaks hundreds of thousands of confidential State Department
cables that WikiLeaks began publishing in November 2010 under the heading
“Cablegate.”
The
response of media organizations and press freedom groups regarding Assange and
WikiLeaks was confused and ambivalent. The tepid embrace by the media community
was based in large measure on the fact that most professional journalists did
not identify with Assange or his methods. And Assange did not help matters at
all with his dissembling and obfuscation.
Assange presented himself as a
journalist at times, but his justifications for WikiLeaks’ actions ranged from
disrupting government communications, to ending war, to “crushing bastards.”
These are not necessarily journalistic motives. He also violated the most basic
of journalistic ethics by failing to remove the names of human rights activists
and journalists who had interacted with U.S. authorities in repressive
countries, putting these individuals at grave risk.
Should
Assange be disqualified from support from journalists and press freedom
organizations because of his lack of journalistic ethics and his generally
loathsome behavior? I don’t think so. On the other side of the equation,
WikiLeaks has tried to suggest that it functions as a journalistic entity. I’m
skeptical. WikiLeaks is best described as an anti-secrecy advocacy group that
uses journalistic strategies to advance its goals.
Although
the question of whether Julian Assange is a journalist is interesting, it’s not
ultimately resolvable or even that relevant. The real question is whether
Assange and WikiLeaks are part of the new global information ecosystem in which
journalists operate. Here the answer is clearly yes. And the other important
question is whether prosecuting Assange under the Espionage Act would threaten
that system. Here again the answer is yes.
The
1917 Espionage Act makes it a crime to obtain, copy, or publicize documents
relating to the defense of the United States. The language is both broad and
vague and could be construed to apply to the media. However, journalists have
not been previously charged for a number of reasons.
The first is that
legislative history suggests that Congress never intended that the law be used
to prosecute the press. A prosecution would also almost certainly have to
overcome a First Amendment challenge. Finally, the Justice Department has
resisted prosecuting journalists because of the likely adverse public reaction
and the damage that such a prosecution would do to the country’s international
reputation.
Journalists
may find Assange personally distasteful and generally disapprove of the
reckless way in which the information was released. But WikiLeaks has in fact
made an extraordinarily valuable contribution to the work of the media. The
initial revelations from Cablegate were, of course, reported simultaneously in
mainstream media outlets, from The Guardian to Le Monde.
But the cables have
also served as an invaluable resource that has enriched day-to-day coverage
from Pakistan to Mali. Global citizens have benefitted tremendously as a
result. Holed up in the Ecuadoran embassy in London, Assange seems a reduced
figure.
But if the U.S. government should ever proceed with prosecuting him
under the Espionage Act, journalists around the world should rush to his
defense, and the outcry should be loud and sustained. Not only would the
prosecution threaten traditional journalists, but it would erode the new system
of information distribution on which global citizens all depend. In other words,
Julian Assange may not be a journalist, but journalists should defend him as if
he were.
As
the Assange case illustrates, journalists can no longer protect their own
interests by advocating solely for press freedom. Instead, journalists must
embrace the broader struggle for freedom of expression and make it their own.
This
does not mean that journalism is going to disappear or that professional
journalists are indistinguishable from bloggers, social media activists, or
human rights advocates. And it certainly does not mean that the quality and
accuracy of the information is irrelevant. Precisely because the line is
growing blurrier by the day, those who define themselves as professional
journalists need more than ever to maintain standards and report with
seriousness and objectivity.
However, it is up to journalists themselves to
make distinctions between journalism and other kinds of speech, and these
distinctions will always be fluid and subject to debate. Governments should not
be participants in these discussions any more than they should be expected to
weigh in on the debate about what constitutes poetry. Governments must protect
all speech, whether journalistic or not. Respect for freedom of expression is
the enabling environment for global journalism.
Aside
from the political and practical considerations, there is also a legal
question. Are journalists or the press as an institution entitled to special
protection under law? Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
makes no distinction between journalistic and nonjournalistic speech. It
states, “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this
right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek,
receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of
frontiers.”
To
suggest that journalists are entitled to special legal protections is even more
problematic in countries around the world where the media as an institution is
historically compromised and the boundaries between journalism and other forms
of expression are rapidly breaking down. In many countries “traditional”
journalists who would be the beneficiaries of greater “press freedom” are
hardly the most trustworthy or independent sources of news.
Take Egypt during
the Tahrir Square uprising. Most professional journalists in Egypt—coddled by
decades of government largesse—continue to take their marching orders from the
authorities. It was a relatively small number of independent journalists
working with bloggers and activists who broke [former Egyptian president Hosni]
Mubarak’s information blockade.
Throughout 2013, as street demonstrations
erupted in Russia, Turkey, and Brazil, the institutional media performed
woefully, forcing protesters to turn to bloggers and social media activists for
independent information. Independent journalists working in these sorts of
environments operate in a “freedom of expression” environment that they share
with other independent voices seeking to document and disseminate information.
Historically,
even if journalists did not enjoy any special legal status, they have been
treated with some deference by governments because of their perceived political
clout. The logic is summed up by the maxim “Never pick a fight with someone who
buys ink by the barrel,” a phrase that has been attributed by a top aide to
President Gerald Ford but whose origin is in dispute. What it meant was that
while governments would take on leakers and others who disclosed confidential
information, they were less likely to challenge the media that published the
information.
This is still true, but the distinction is breaking down as the
media fractures and its power diminishes. Prosecutors in the Chelsea (formerly
Bradley) Manning case who argued that she should have been convicted of
espionage and “aiding the enemy” because she knew that the documents she
leaked, once public, would be accessed by al-Qaeda acknowledged that they would
have presented the same argument had the materials been published by The New
York Times. Meanwhile, British investigators are considering laying terrorism
charges against The Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger for publishing accounts of
the documents leaked by Edward Snowden.
Journalists
play a unique and pivotal role in every society and must be able to do their
work without interference from the state. But as the boundaries between
journalists and nonjournalists continue to erode and any meaningful definition
of journalism becomes more and more elusive, journalists have to recognize that
their rights are best protected not by the special realm of “press freedom” but
rather by ensuring that guarantees of free expression are extended to all.
While it is natural and normal for journalists and press freedom organizations
to give special emphasis to their journalistic colleagues, they can’t stand on
the sideline of the broader struggle for freedom of expression, both online and
off, and must actively defend the rights of all people everywhere to gather
news, express their opinions, and disseminate information to the public.
Reprinted
from “The New Censorship: Inside the Global Battle for Media Freedom” by Joel
Simon. Copyright 2015 by Joel Simon
Source:
http://niemanreports.org
No comments:
Post a Comment