6 ms·

For Third Year, Committee to Protect Journalists Excludes Assange

86 points by 1cvmask 5y ago

internationalis 5y ago
[flagged]
abbassi 5y ago
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
  [flagged]
  - KronisLV 5y ago
    I think that most systems are flawed and, given enough time, will be corrupted and ruined. That has happened with (to my knowledge) every communist nation out there, from USSR to Cuba. Similarly, that has already happened with the capitalist US: corporate interests over those of people, and the interests of the rich over everyone else; at times, it's something like the plot right out of a Deus Ex game: https://youtu.be/_fHfgU8oMSo https://youtu.be/_fHfgU8oMSo . Honestly, the same is also probably happening with the more socialist leaning EU, at least based on how many stories about corruption and bribes one hears on the news in my country, not even thinking about the same on a grander scale. I don't really have any solutions to offer or ideologies to push and i'm not sure whether individuals being politically active is (always) even that effective, just look at Russia and how many people there are in prisons, or how polarized everything is in US with identity politics. All i can say for sure is that humans and human nature are the common denominator in every single one of those systems, in which the reality eventually differs from the theory behind them.
    - dkirill 5y ago
      The scale of corruption in US or EU is not comparable to communist/ex-communist countries
      - thanatos519 5y ago
        Perhaps ... but it's right up there for endemism, maleficence, duplicity, and propaganda.
      - KronisLV 5y ago
        I feel like trying to make a scale and throwing numbers around would be problematic, because it would detract from the overall argument that all systems have significant problems. If you're interested in that doing that, i'm sure that there are places online that try to document the various injustices (here's a US centric one https://www.reddit.com/r/Keep_Track/top/?t=all https://www.reddit.com/r/Keep_Track/top/?t=all though probably also biased due to the political polarization) as well as historical writings about the exposed problems in the communist countries of the old days. If anyone has any good ones, feel free to link them, because aside from the actual argument, i'm also curious. Personally, in regards to the modern day world, i'd say that stealing 400 billion from taxpayers is pretty bad, which is one colorful example in recent memory: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5839394 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5... Of course, in my day to day life, it really doesn't matter whether that's 40 or 400 billion, because i will hardly ever even make a million myself (living in the EU, at my current salary it would take me 49 years of work, aside from inflation, salary increases etc.). Not to say that it's not important to talk about these things, just that the scales at play are so mindbogglingly huge that they are hard to even reason about.
    - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
  - abbassi 5y ago
    [flagged]
ejb999 5y ago
protecting free speech really just means protecting free speech of people they agree with. No surprise here.
- js8 5y ago
  The point of things like constitution and Universal Charter of Human Rights is not to actually prevent anybody to infringe human rights; people with enough power can always do that. Rather, like any other form of contract, it is supposed to act as a tripwire which gives ordinary people information that the infringing party might actually try to do something worse. It's a defense in depth. The powerful are in power not because they are better, or stronger, but because they control the information we have about them. That's why transparency is so useful in rooting out the corruption. Unfortunately, the counterplay to this "tripwire" from the powerful is to disable it by making people cynical (like the boy who cried wolf), that they get used to it and dismiss these violations as false alarms. Effectively, they are saying, "contracts do not matter", and wrongly justify it by correct observation that contracts always rely on weak link, which is the judiciary system. So we should try not to be cynical, and rather use this information in the future. Maybe at some point, some of us come to a decision whether to support CPJ or Reporters without Borders; and then this tripwire will give us guidance to make the right call.
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    > ... not to actually prevent anybody to infringe human rights; people with enough power can always do that. Rather, like any other form of contract ... That's a very insightful analysis, thank you. I think another example of this is Google having a motto of "Don't be evil". Obviously a motto isn't enough to prevent evil, and it can't even define what "evil" actually means, but, like you say, it is a tripwire, or like a warrant canary, and a reminder to the public to always be vigilant against the threat that such a powerful entity represents. (The point of this comment isn't to condemn Google, as I think it's probably the least evil of the MAMAA oligarchs, and people can decide for themselves whether Google's motto worked while it existed).
js8 5y ago
It makes perfect sense, they are the true journalists according to their own definition, so they don't just report facts, but they use "editorial process". /s
- abbassi 5y ago
  - simonh 5y ago
    Maybe it’s just that the vast majority of people freely choose to disagree with you on this. Let me put it another way, how would you go about increasing peoples freedom (or reducing the authoritarianism you perceive) in such a way that they started meeting your expectations of behaviour?
    - abbassi 5y ago
      [flagged]
  - hulitu 5y ago
    Yes you are. Just keep a low profile so they don't come after you.
  - chadcmulligan 5y ago
    I don't understand the silence, as I've said on here before - how can an Australian citizen who published articles in Iceland, who was captured in the UK be extradited to the US for crimes under US law? You look at the Australian journalist who was working in China as a journalist and was imprisoned for vague charges, and there's an outcry. Look at the Australian citizen who was captured half a world away they're trying to drag to the US for crimes under US law that weren't committed in that country - is there a difference? It could be argued the case of Assange is even worse. Imagine if China decided Assange was guilty of crimes under Chinese law and reached out like this, the outrage would be palpable. Even the deputy PM has recently came out and said Assange shouldn't be extradited - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-14/barnaby-joyce-opposes-extradition-of-julian-assange/100697630 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-14/barnaby-joyce-opposes... and said similar things.
mandmandam 5y ago
chippiewill 5y ago
The slightly less cynical view is that Wikileaks doesn't meet the bar for journalistic integrity and responsible disclosure. Wikileaks takes far less care with vetting classified documents than for example Glenn Greenwald did with the documents Snowden provided.
- stillbourne 5y ago
  This. I thought Wikileaks was an important endeavor and Julian Assange should be protected right up until he released "Collateral Murder." All he had to do was release the audio and video undoctored, it was damning enough in the raw. But the moment he decided to jazz it up with sound effects and music he lost all integrity. Ever since then Julian Assange's Wikileaks has only released "curated" information that he felt fits his narrative. The original Wikileaks was nothing like that, it was just that a wiki of leaks. I still think the original Wikileaks has a place in this world, but Julian Assange's Wikileaks is horseshit and I don't care if he gets arrested.
  - CogitoCogito 5y ago
    > Ever since then Julian Assange's Wikileaks has only released "curated" information that he felt fits his narrative. Sounds to me like essentially every news organization ever.
    - stillbourne 5y ago
      > Sounds to me like essentially every news organization ever. There is a thing called journalistic integrity, it does exist and is practiced. It is also something Assange completely lacks.
      - lp0_on_fire 5y ago
        > There is a thing called journalistic integrity, it does exist and is practiced. Trust in the media is at an all time low, mainly because many (not all) "journalists" threw integrity out the window in favor of activism.
asimpletune 5y ago
It's honestly stuff like this that gives a modicum of merit to the often repeated sentiment that NYT and WaPo are corrupt organizations that are just propaganda for the toads living under a volcano plotting out every passing moment (or whatever, IDK). I remember a few years back, when NYT was really suffering a huge loss in readership, they had this mega panel to try and figure out why the paper was failing. At no point did their own editorial choices figure into the picture. (I think they decided the solution they needed was these sort of digital hybrid articles that have slick graphics, or something along these lines.) In the big picture, I think these traditional news outlets do good, important work. However, they've really failed at times spectacularly in ways that have just given fodder to less reputable outlets, which people do listen to, and thus harmed even the notion of truth itself? Examples would be how Iraq was covered, when the NYT had evidence similar to what Snowden leaked like 10 years later, but chose not to publish because the WH said they'd have a lot of death on their hands and stuff. Also, I think a lot of people feel that they pushed way too hard for a Clinton coronation, instead of really being objective and reporting on the phenomenon that was Bernie. I don't bring up Bernie because I'm a Bernie Bro btw, I'm just saying that he was usually editorialized as a nuisance, perineal loser, who was a bad politician, when in the meanwhile his foil (trump) was seeing a similar populist rise that was met with similar befuddlement. The truth is, that Bernie and Trump were huge misses by media outlets and in many ways, these institutions couldn't see past their own certainty of how the world works. So, when I read that no one is going to stand up for Assange, I just sort of shake my head and think that they really haven't learned a thing. They've missed opportunities to break huge stories, while at the same time have done very, very good reporting in the things that they excel at (I.e. Trump taxes, Panama papers, etc...) The problem is in an unfair fight, where one side isn't burdened by the truth, you can't even slip an inch. You have to follow the truth, wherever the story may take you, and a lot of these editors in my opinion have been failures for not taking this seriously. It gives a semblance of credibility to the finger wagging from laughing stock alternative outlets, because sometimes (very rarely) they do have a point.
Someone 5y ago
> In the organization’s press release on the 2021 index, it states, “No journalists were jailed in North America at the time of the census deadline.” That is only true if one redefines Assange as someone who is not a journalist. I don’t understand that logic. AFAIK, Assange is in prison, but not (yet) in North America. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange agrees: “Assange has been confined in Belmarsh maximum-security prison in London since April 2019” The complaint should be that he isn’t on their list for the UK.
starklevnertz 5y ago
felix_n 5y ago
abbassi 5y ago

86 points by 1cvmask 5y ago

internationalis 5y ago

[flagged]

abbassi 5y ago

kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
[flagged]
- KronisLV 5y ago
  I think that most systems are flawed and, given enough time, will be corrupted and ruined. That has happened with (to my knowledge) every communist nation out there, from USSR to Cuba. Similarly, that has already happened with the capitalist US: corporate interests over those of people, and the interests of the rich over everyone else; at times, it's something like the plot right out of a Deus Ex game: https://youtu.be/_fHfgU8oMSo https://youtu.be/_fHfgU8oMSo . Honestly, the same is also probably happening with the more socialist leaning EU, at least based on how many stories about corruption and bribes one hears on the news in my country, not even thinking about the same on a grander scale. I don't really have any solutions to offer or ideologies to push and i'm not sure whether individuals being politically active is (always) even that effective, just look at Russia and how many people there are in prisons, or how polarized everything is in US with identity politics. All i can say for sure is that humans and human nature are the common denominator in every single one of those systems, in which the reality eventually differs from the theory behind them.
  - dkirill 5y ago
    The scale of corruption in US or EU is not comparable to communist/ex-communist countries
    - thanatos519 5y ago
      Perhaps ... but it's right up there for endemism, maleficence, duplicity, and propaganda.
    - KronisLV 5y ago
      I feel like trying to make a scale and throwing numbers around would be problematic, because it would detract from the overall argument that all systems have significant problems. If you're interested in that doing that, i'm sure that there are places online that try to document the various injustices (here's a US centric one https://www.reddit.com/r/Keep_Track/top/?t=all https://www.reddit.com/r/Keep_Track/top/?t=all though probably also biased due to the political polarization) as well as historical writings about the exposed problems in the communist countries of the old days. If anyone has any good ones, feel free to link them, because aside from the actual argument, i'm also curious. Personally, in regards to the modern day world, i'd say that stealing 400 billion from taxpayers is pretty bad, which is one colorful example in recent memory: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5839394 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5... Of course, in my day to day life, it really doesn't matter whether that's 40 or 400 billion, because i will hardly ever even make a million myself (living in the EU, at my current salary it would take me 49 years of work, aside from inflation, salary increases etc.). Not to say that it's not important to talk about these things, just that the scales at play are so mindbogglingly huge that they are hard to even reason about.
  - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
- abbassi 5y ago
  [flagged]

ejb999 5y ago

protecting free speech really just means protecting free speech of people they agree with. No surprise here.

js8 5y ago
The point of things like constitution and Universal Charter of Human Rights is not to actually prevent anybody to infringe human rights; people with enough power can always do that. Rather, like any other form of contract, it is supposed to act as a tripwire which gives ordinary people information that the infringing party might actually try to do something worse. It's a defense in depth. The powerful are in power not because they are better, or stronger, but because they control the information we have about them. That's why transparency is so useful in rooting out the corruption. Unfortunately, the counterplay to this "tripwire" from the powerful is to disable it by making people cynical (like the boy who cried wolf), that they get used to it and dismiss these violations as false alarms. Effectively, they are saying, "contracts do not matter", and wrongly justify it by correct observation that contracts always rely on weak link, which is the judiciary system. So we should try not to be cynical, and rather use this information in the future. Maybe at some point, some of us come to a decision whether to support CPJ or Reporters without Borders; and then this tripwire will give us guidance to make the right call.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  > ... not to actually prevent anybody to infringe human rights; people with enough power can always do that. Rather, like any other form of contract ... That's a very insightful analysis, thank you. I think another example of this is Google having a motto of "Don't be evil". Obviously a motto isn't enough to prevent evil, and it can't even define what "evil" actually means, but, like you say, it is a tripwire, or like a warrant canary, and a reminder to the public to always be vigilant against the threat that such a powerful entity represents. (The point of this comment isn't to condemn Google, as I think it's probably the least evil of the MAMAA oligarchs, and people can decide for themselves whether Google's motto worked while it existed).

js8 5y ago

It makes perfect sense, they are the true journalists according to their own definition, so they don't just report facts, but they use "editorial process". /s

abbassi 5y ago
- simonh 5y ago
  Maybe it’s just that the vast majority of people freely choose to disagree with you on this. Let me put it another way, how would you go about increasing peoples freedom (or reducing the authoritarianism you perceive) in such a way that they started meeting your expectations of behaviour?
  - abbassi 5y ago
    [flagged]
- hulitu 5y ago
  Yes you are. Just keep a low profile so they don't come after you.
- chadcmulligan 5y ago
  I don't understand the silence, as I've said on here before - how can an Australian citizen who published articles in Iceland, who was captured in the UK be extradited to the US for crimes under US law? You look at the Australian journalist who was working in China as a journalist and was imprisoned for vague charges, and there's an outcry. Look at the Australian citizen who was captured half a world away they're trying to drag to the US for crimes under US law that weren't committed in that country - is there a difference? It could be argued the case of Assange is even worse. Imagine if China decided Assange was guilty of crimes under Chinese law and reached out like this, the outrage would be palpable. Even the deputy PM has recently came out and said Assange shouldn't be extradited - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-14/barnaby-joyce-opposes-extradition-of-julian-assange/100697630 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-14/barnaby-joyce-opposes... and said similar things.

mandmandam 5y ago

chippiewill 5y ago

The slightly less cynical view is that Wikileaks doesn't meet the bar for journalistic integrity and responsible disclosure. Wikileaks takes far less care with vetting classified documents than for example Glenn Greenwald did with the documents Snowden provided.

stillbourne 5y ago
This. I thought Wikileaks was an important endeavor and Julian Assange should be protected right up until he released "Collateral Murder." All he had to do was release the audio and video undoctored, it was damning enough in the raw. But the moment he decided to jazz it up with sound effects and music he lost all integrity. Ever since then Julian Assange's Wikileaks has only released "curated" information that he felt fits his narrative. The original Wikileaks was nothing like that, it was just that a wiki of leaks. I still think the original Wikileaks has a place in this world, but Julian Assange's Wikileaks is horseshit and I don't care if he gets arrested.
- CogitoCogito 5y ago
  > Ever since then Julian Assange's Wikileaks has only released "curated" information that he felt fits his narrative. Sounds to me like essentially every news organization ever.
  - stillbourne 5y ago
    > Sounds to me like essentially every news organization ever. There is a thing called journalistic integrity, it does exist and is practiced. It is also something Assange completely lacks.
    - lp0_on_fire 5y ago
      > There is a thing called journalistic integrity, it does exist and is practiced. Trust in the media is at an all time low, mainly because many (not all) "journalists" threw integrity out the window in favor of activism.

asimpletune 5y ago

It's honestly stuff like this that gives a modicum of merit to the often repeated sentiment that NYT and WaPo are corrupt organizations that are just propaganda for the toads living under a volcano plotting out every passing moment (or whatever, IDK). I remember a few years back, when NYT was really suffering a huge loss in readership, they had this mega panel to try and figure out why the paper was failing. At no point did their own editorial choices figure into the picture. (I think they decided the solution they needed was these sort of digital hybrid articles that have slick graphics, or something along these lines.) In the big picture, I think these traditional news outlets do good, important work. However, they've really failed at times spectacularly in ways that have just given fodder to less reputable outlets, which people do listen to, and thus harmed even the notion of truth itself? Examples would be how Iraq was covered, when the NYT had evidence similar to what Snowden leaked like 10 years later, but chose not to publish because the WH said they'd have a lot of death on their hands and stuff. Also, I think a lot of people feel that they pushed way too hard for a Clinton coronation, instead of really being objective and reporting on the phenomenon that was Bernie. I don't bring up Bernie because I'm a Bernie Bro btw, I'm just saying that he was usually editorialized as a nuisance, perineal loser, who was a bad politician, when in the meanwhile his foil (trump) was seeing a similar populist rise that was met with similar befuddlement. The truth is, that Bernie and Trump were huge misses by media outlets and in many ways, these institutions couldn't see past their own certainty of how the world works. So, when I read that no one is going to stand up for Assange, I just sort of shake my head and think that they really haven't learned a thing. They've missed opportunities to break huge stories, while at the same time have done very, very good reporting in the things that they excel at (I.e. Trump taxes, Panama papers, etc...) The problem is in an unfair fight, where one side isn't burdened by the truth, you can't even slip an inch. You have to follow the truth, wherever the story may take you, and a lot of these editors in my opinion have been failures for not taking this seriously. It gives a semblance of credibility to the finger wagging from laughing stock alternative outlets, because sometimes (very rarely) they do have a point.

Someone 5y ago

> In the organization’s press release on the 2021 index, it states, “No journalists were jailed in North America at the time of the census deadline.” That is only true if one redefines Assange as someone who is not a journalist. I don’t understand that logic. AFAIK, Assange is in prison, but not (yet) in North America. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange agrees: “Assange has been confined in Belmarsh maximum-security prison in London since April 2019” The complaint should be that he isn’t on their list for the UK.

starklevnertz 5y ago

felix_n 5y ago

abbassi 5y ago