Julian Assange Arrested: The Hero or The Criminal of Journalism?
By: Stephanie Fenuela - 01043170012
[AP, Reuters, BBC] When I was a kid, I remember the moment in the residential park with two neighbors and we play ‘Truth or Dare’. Even when I knew the risk of playing it is to either do something challenging or either telling them my secrets, whenever I got ‘truth’, I will make sure that they can be trusted. Secret or privacy is something sensitive and can be considered as our deepest interest. Especially in politics, state’s interest is something that is veiled and unpredictable. The famous American whistle blower, Edward Snowden, succeed to leaked highly confidential United States government’s information to the public on 2013. Snowden received asylum protection from Russia and build Freedom of Press Foundation to protect journalist from government supervision.
Source: Reuters.com In this democratic-media era, journalist become more daring to report news and criticize government actions. Julian Assange is another version of Snowden. Assange was born in Australia on 1971 and grow as a smart researcher who loves internet and excellent at mathematics and physics. But his mastery in internet been used for hacking purposes together with his friend and he got accused because of it. He did not imprison because he did not reoffend, so he just fulfill his fined obligations. After that, he works with Suelette Dreyfus who focused on internet research, writing books about computers skills. Even as a researcher, Assange still concerned about government policies, justice, and how to dig deeper powerful parties’ interest. On 2006, Assange with his friends build Wikileaks. It does not have any relation with Wikimedia like Wikipedia, but Wiki simply means any website that allows creating and editing of a webpage through browser. Like its name, Wikileaks publish leaked controversial and confidential state’s or public figure’s information in a form of raw data from anonymous sources. Wikileaks have published Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin private emails, excavate ‘Panama Papers’ issue, and the most significant one that bring Assange being caught is the documents and cables about US war in Iraq and Afghanistan. When he was about received extradition, he seeks for asylum protection from Ecuadorean embassy in London. For seven years he lives there until April 11th 2019, he arrested by London Metropolitan Police and will be extradited to United States. The Ecuador president, Lenin Moreno stop granting his asylum protection because even inside the embassy, Assange still intervene other state’s internal affair which he published in Wikileaks.
Source: wikileaks.org
Many people especially from journalist and radical liberalist condemn this capture as a violation of freedom of speech. But state’s leaders and policy makers think that this is the right action because Assange already violates states’ privacy and stole the information illegally. Theresa May, Britain Prime Minister think that this is the proof that the law enforcement is just, that no one is treated differently above the law. It is still debatable, whether Wikileaks is relevant to be called as journalism or more than that. In journalism, freedom of speech and the public right to receive information is absolute, but Wikileaks is just the more extreme version that requires illegal data-leaking. Wikileaks supported by accountable data that have significant impact, but it can also be a weapon to endanger other’s reputation and life. For example, the ‘Panama Papers’ case, Wikileaks can resulted a better awareness and government policy about the taxes, but when Wikileaks published private information from one’s emails, it can also violate one’s human right to have privacy and to express their interest. So, is Wikileaks worth to be called the next level of journalism or does it instead hinder others to have freedom of speech in prevention of privacy-violation? Is Julian Assange leaking hobby can be considered as a journalism crime? You decide! Source: AP News: https://www.apnews.com/4174e69477be4d8aaf8e14e0a728eaa8 Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ecuador-assange-factbox/factbox-reaction-to-arrest-of-julian-assange-in-london-idUSKCN1RN1I5 BBC News: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-11047811 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-47891737