-OpEd-
MADRID — U.S. prosecutors argued before the UK High Court late last month that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is not an “ordinary journalist.” Yet their understanding of “ordinary journalist” remains unclear, in our new era where the practice of journalism extends well beyond traditional media.
The same could be said of Alexei Navalny, an informant turned activist, who was recently murdered while a prisoner of Russian authorities.
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The link between the cases is evident. Assange’s wife, Stella, told the British press that her husband was in “very poor health” and that his life would be in danger if he was extradited and imprisoned in the U.S.
“It’s no longer possible to save Alexei, but it’s not too late for Julian,” she said in an interview in The Evening Standard.
Uncomfortable information
The alleged gravity of their crimes, without conflating them, is having spread information that is uncomfortable for those in power. Uncomfortable for the Kremlin in one case, uncomfortable for the U.S. Defense and State Departments in the other. And in both cases, the information turned out to be true.
What we have here is pure and simple investigative and denunciatory journalism. Had they committed a crime, they would be protected by the preponderance of the right to freedom of expression, and in no way do they deserve a life sentence —let alone death.
Newspapers around the world shared Assange’s revelations. Should Washington go after them, too?
Navalny paid with his life, after serving two years of his 19-year prison sentence. That was after a poisoning attempt in 2020 that almost cost him his life. At the time, President Vladimir Putin said that if Russian security services were responsible for the poisoning, the opposition leader would not be alive. This time he is dead, so it must have been them.
Assange has been waiting for the UK High Court’s extradition decision for five years in a London prison. That is in addition to the seven years he took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. If extradition to the U.S. is granted, he could be sentenced to up to 175 years in prison based on the 17 espionage charges he faces there, many of them covered by war laws.
Two journalists
No one doubts that Assange is a journalist, however non-ordinary he may be. We do not know if he worked for an enemy power or if he had objectives other than the dissemination of truthful information of public interest.
What the Australian journalist did was found the WikiLeaks information agency, which, thanks to new online tools, obtains and disseminates relevant information. It has published hundreds of thousands of documents, including some that prove the U.S. army’s abuse of civilians during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Newspapers around the world shared his revelations. Should Washington go after them, too?
There is no doubt either that Navalny is a journalist, an unordinary one. Last week, the prestigious Columbia Journalism Review listed plenty of arguments on its website to prove it.
“Putin killed Navalny because of his ability to reach people with the truth.”
Masha Gessen, a journalist at The New Yorker, wrote for example that, having embraced ethno-nationalist politics, Navalny “found his agenda and his political voice in documenting corruption.” Frustrated that most Russian media were censored and controlled by Putin, he created his own online investigative media. His work gave rise to “an entire generation of independent Russian investigative media, many of which continue working in exile.”
For Anne Applebaum, renowned journalist at The Atlantic, Navalny’s “extraordinary gift” was that “he could take the dry facts of kleptocracy — the numbers and statistics that usually bog down even the best financial journalists — and make them entertaining.” In part, Applebaum concludes, “Putin killed him because of his ability to reach people with the truth, and because of his talent for breaking through the fog of propaganda that now blinds his countrymen, and some of ours as well.”
State secrets
Both cases are uncomfortable for the powers that be — Navalny will continue to be so after his death, as Putin has made him a martyr. Leaders argue that the men endanger national security. That is, they have revealed the abusive practices by the state, which are secret precisely because they are unlawful.
Rather than persecute informants, the state should be more careful not to resort to illicit practices and to protect such sensitive information, because if a journalist can find it, it is even easier for an enemy spy to find it.
Only dictatorships claim the power to establish a registry of journalists or grant press cards.
No one, except readers and viewers, can deliver the title of journalist, let alone Putin or the U.S. Justice Department. Only dictatorships claim the power to establish a registry of journalists or grant press cards. In Spain, journalists of a certain age speak from our own experience.
Assange and Navalny have earned being called journalists. No “ordinary” journalists, sure, but they deserve this title because they have managed to use new technologies in the service of information, and because they have led freedom of expression to its maximum consequences.
If the mission of the press is to report what the powerful don’t want to be known, that is exactly what Navalny and Assange have done.
