Elric of Melbourne is no saint
To extradite Julian Assange would be deeply damaging for journalism, even though he is not a journalist himself.
Writing in the Guardian today, esteemed investigative reporter Duncan Campbell says that the extradition of Julian Assange would amount to a death sentence. Actually, that is subeditorial hyperbole, but Campbell’s basic argument stands: exposing crime and torture cannot be seen as worse than committing them, and whistleblowers should be protected.
Like Campbell and other journalists, I am worried about the implications for journalism of the state persecution of whistleblowers, and there I include Julian Assange. The thing about Assange, however, is that he is not a journalist.
It is possible that the chap I mockingly refer to as Elric of Melbourne started out with good intentions, and his early collaborations with journalists resulted in some great investigative reportage when journalists took the lead and applied the principles and practices of ethical journalism. But when Assange felt constrained by the process and vomited vast amounts of raw intelligence data into the public domain, he went way beyond the bounds of what is morally and ethically acceptable.
Journalists should campaign against the extradition of Assange as it is in the interests of media freedom to do so. But I cannot tolerate the hagiographical elevation of Assange into some kind of social justice warrior-saint. He is a man with blood on his hands and an ego the size of a planet. Lionising Assange debases public debate around the war crimes exposed by Wikileaks, and does a great disservice to whistleblowers as a whole. Most damning of all, it trashes the memories of those who lost their lives as a result of Assange’s morally reprehensible actions.