What did WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange say by releasing classified paperwork? :npr

A. MARTINEZ, HOST:

For more on Julian Assange and the influence of WikiLeaks, let’s call Alan Rusbridger. He is the former editor-in-chief of The Mother Father. He now edits the stream affairs book Probability. At The Mother, he was one of the first journalists to work with Assange and WikiLeaks. Rusbridger joins us now from London.

Allen, during these years, thought Assange was transformed from a champion of press freedom to a digital pariah. Why did such a drastic change in public opinion once occur?

Alan Rusbridger: Right in the morning. Well, I think one of the most important reasons was the whole uproar in 2016 over the leaks of the DNC emails and Hillary Clinton, where people felt Assange had become more of an activist than a journalist. He is an advanced person because he has some other identities. In my opinion, he may be a journalist; He may be a writer; He would also be an activist, a kind of knowledge anarchist. And that’s everybody’s identity, and I think a lot of people who call themselves the right kind of newshounds are resistant to making a series with that.

MARTINEZ: How did you recognize him?

Rusbridger: Tactically, I feel all of the above. We worked on many big projects on Iraq, on Afghanistan, on diplomatic cables, with documents, including The Unutilized York Times. And time and time again they have been extremely fruitful studies. On occasion they have been terrifying. However I have always defended the work we did together, which was very careful and professional. And so – my dealings with him go back to when he was behaving as a journalist.

MARTINEZ: Yes. You were editor-in-chief of The Mother when it was one of the few newspapers to publish news based on the one million documents that were stolen by Chelsea Manning, a US military intelligence analyst. Alan, how did you decide what to keep and what not to keep?

Rusbridger: Cleverly, I’m ruthless, let’s shoot The Unutilized York Times, there were even three ECU newspapers. I’m ruthless, we had independent groups running with them, and we collaborated on examining the methodology to see what should be modified and gave tips on how to keep them responsibly, even if Sometimes we had other choices about which stories to read. And our effort throughout this time has been to not put anyone at risk or highlight what we consider to be a public obsession with stories that highlight important issues about abuses by special forces – or forces in combat. Does. And these are remarkable stories to me.

MARTINEZ: While you say you didn’t want to put people in danger, who specifically were you talking about, the people in the documents or the newspapers that were exposing them? ?

Rusbridger: Wrong. I am talking about the people in the documents.

MARTINEZ: Okay.

Rusbridger: And The Unutilized York Times once had – you know, the practice of running around with this type of file, and so they connected with businesses and white areas to prepare a story so that we had as much We were as cautious as we could be.

MARTINEZ: I’m asking this best because now that Julian Assange has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to disseminate classified security data, it means that for the first week in American history, reporting on the data And the federal government now considers publishing invisibles to be against the law. So, I’m being ruthless, how does this not put all investigative newspapers in great danger now?

Rusbridger: Insanely, that’s the dangerous factor in this request to trade. I’m glad Assange – that he’s out. However, the utility of the espionage business, passed in 1917, to trade spies against people behaving with journalistic intentions is a completely new and dangerous thing, and it is part of an evolution that has taken place in the U.S. It happened in. Ok. This happened in Australia – I just want to make a bad impression on security reporting nationwide. You’ll see from the federal government’s perspective why they want to keep issues invisible, and some issues should definitely be kept invisible. Although actually threatening people with this spying business is completely inappropriate for me.

MARTINEZ: Do you believe this could have a chilling effect on whistleblowers in the future?

Rusbridger: I think that’s already happened as a result of whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, who, in my view, has played the role of a people carrier in what he did, will certainly spend the rest of his time in Moscow. . So I think the purpose of it is to discourage, and I think it will discourage.

MARTINEZ: Alan Rusbridger is the essayist for the book Probability. Alan, thanks so much for your week.

Rusbridger: Commendable.

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