The Constitution does not forbid attacks on the freedom of the press because its notoriously vain founders loved the printers who, in the early years of the republic, produced what President George Washington did spurned as “devilish … shameful acts against good decency”.

Washington’s thin-skinned successor, John Adams, had a printer arrested for allegedly defaming the president “in a way that tends to arouse insurrection and opposition to the law.” Adams signed Aliens and sedition lawswhich made it a crime to “write, print, speak, or publish malicious scriptures or documents against the United States Government or any chambers of Congress of the United States or the President of the United States”. He then had one of his leading critics, Matthew LyonHe was tried and jailed after the Vermont representative ridiculed the “second president’s ridiculous pomp”. Lyon, it was charged, was “an evil and seditious person, of a depraved spirit and of an evil and diabolical disposition”. Thomas Jefferson, who was no stranger to the scandal, was similarly loveless. He regretted “The putrid state our newspapers have gotten into, and the malevolence, vulgarity and mendacious spirit of those who write for them.”

In other words, the founders blamed the printing publishers of their day with a language as poisonous as contemporary US officials when they speak of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks publisher proposed by the Biden administration, 2010 espionage allegations to collect publication of evidence for “Collateral murder“Atrocities committed by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan. Assange draws bipartisan sharpness. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell referred to him as “a high-tech terrorist. “Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose 2016 campaign targeted WikiLeaks data dumps, has said, “The bottom line is [Assange] must answer for what he has done, at least as it is charged. “

Last week a UK court found that Assange could be delivered to the United States to be indicted by the Justice Department on alleged involvement in a hacking conspiracy involving former intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to reveal classified information.

Assange’s prosecutors and critics saying this cannot be justified. You would not protect him by the standards used to maintain the ability of journalists to do their job – and publishers to get that work out. Why? Because although WikiLeaks has received numerous awards and honors for its journalistic work, we are told that Assange is “not a journalist. ”

But of course the Bill of Rights doesn’t mention journalists. The first constitutional amendment speaks of “the press”. It was made at a time when printers were handing out controversial, often burning, screeds against the ruling class. The publishers of the post-colonial era were villains and rebels who spoke truths undesirable to power – or, more precisely, spoke in print. They knew full well that their publications sparked outrage. Benjamin Franklin, a printer who turned out to be one of the better founders, freely admitted this than he concluded“If all printers were determined not to print anything until they were sure it wouldn’t offend anyone, very little would be printed.”

The purpose of protecting press freedom has never been to privilege innocent speeches or to establish a priestly class of journalists who are somehow considered acceptable by government and business elites. It is about defending the free flow of information, which the powerful would prefer to keep secret, but to which the people have a right. For this reason, on the eve of the 1800 elections in which he turned Adams’ attack on freedom of the press on its head, Jefferson Elbridge explained to Gerry, “I am … for the freedom of the press and against all violations of the constitution, in order to silence the complaints or criticism, whether fair or unjust, of our citizens against the behavior of their agents by force and not for reasons of reason.”

If we are serious about protecting the right of widely recognized journalists to track down and publish classified information about what governments are doing on our behalf but without our informed consent, then we must defend the rights of the more controversial printers and web publishers defend them get them and distribute them.

This understanding is intended to permeate the public discourse on freedom of the press in the USA. But it rarely does. Too often prominent voices from politics and the media fall silent – or at least quietly – when real battles over the First Amendment are fought. Most worryingly, there is currently no loud outcry from across the political spectrum over the charges against Assange. One notable exception is US Representative Ro Khanna, the California Democrat who worked with US Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) To address at least some of the Abuse in connection with the Espionage Act.

“I am against the prosecution of Assange,” said Khanna, who stated that “the persecution of Assange will have a deterrent effect on any journalist who publishes information and violates the First Amendment.”

Denying the arguments of successive governments to prosecute the WikiLeaks co-founder, Khanna told me last week: “Assange has done many morally suspicious things by failing to edit civilians’ personal information and putting them at risk, and also the timing of its publications, which will have a devastating impact on the 2016 elections. But one can condemn Assange’s actions without setting a precedent for criminalizing the publication of material that calls into question state power. ”

That is a fair balance any free press defender should be able to strike. It is not necessary to make Assange a hero to defy his accusation. But it is necessary to reject a successive presidential administration project which – if it comes to an end – will set a precedent for the prosecution of journalists and publishers.

As the author and co-author of a number of books on Media and democracy, an active supporter of journalism unions and media reform groups and speaker at world congresses of the International Union of Journalists (IFJ), I have thought a lot about the threats facing journalism in the 21st century. They are many. But few are as serious as the criminalization of work, the power to tell the truth.

I share the view of Ben Wizner, the director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, who recently explained:

The prosecution of Julian Assange poses a grave threat to the freedom of the press. Criminal charges against an editor for publishing truthful information sets a dangerous precedent for targeting any news organization that the government may use by disclosing its secrets hold accountable. Any criminal prosecution of Mr. Assange by the United States would be unprecedented and unconstitutional and would open the door to criminal investigations by other news organizations. The government must immediately drop the charges against him.

Those of us who believe in the need for a robust and genuinely free press need to recognize this IFJ General Secretary Anthony Bellanger was right when he stated, “President Joe Biden must end the years of politically motivated persecution of Julian Assange by finally dropping the charges against him. The criminalization of whistleblowers and investigative journalists has no place in a democracy. ”

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