Re:Julian Assange can be extradited to the US, court rules
by jollybean on Friday December 10, 2021 @12:47PM
(#29513002)
It's not 'journalism' to release arbitrary secrets even if the transparency might be beneficial.
Secrecy can be harmful in some cases but it's also essential in many ways, it's really not an argument at all. Nobody would be able to do their jobs otherwise.
Re:Julian Assange can be extradited to the US, court rules
by AnthonyMouse on Friday December 10, 2021 @12:55PM
(#29513113)
> It's not 'journalism' to release arbitrary secrets even if the transparency might be beneficial.
Uncovering and publishing secrets is the core of journalism.
> Secrecy can be harmful in some cases but it's also essential in many ways
Then they should do a better job of keeping the important things secret. But it's good that they occasionally fail.
This, too, is journalism. Showing that the world isn't black and white, that sometimes the US does bad things that we should work against and sometimes they do the right thing, that's important too. Secrecy is harmful to democracy.
It's obvious why the state department tries to keep their internal communications secret, but it's also obvious why journalists have a public interest in trying to reveal them. We should let them both make their attempt instead of bringing criminal charges against one side for doing the job we need them to do.
Notice that the job is the same regardless of what's in the cables, because you (along with the public) don't know that ahead of time.
But to be clear, a strong argument against your point is that he's being prosecuted. All the government insiders who leak classified information to the media in order to advance the government's interests are not sitting next to him in a cell, are they?