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That doesn’t make him “not a journalist.” He’s a journalist. But if a journalist commits murder, cracks a safe, or cracks a password to access a locked computer, it is an independent crime that has nothing to do with either journalism or 1A.
Ari Melber’s off the deep end here.
A person can be BOTH:
- journalist and murderer
- journalist and safe-cracker
- journalist and computer-cracker
Assange is not being prosecuted for publishing or writing or disclosing or transmitting any protected speech. The case is for conspiring to break into a computer.
- journalist and murderer
- journalist and safe-cracker
- journalist and computer-cracker
Assange is not being prosecuted for publishing or writing or disclosing or transmitting any protected speech. The case is for conspiring to break into a computer.
And the act is helping to crack a password.
If the charged act Assange did in the conspiracy was “and then later he published the cracked material,” that would indeed have 1A implications. This charge does not. It is about breaking and entering.
If the charged act Assange did in the conspiracy was “and then later he published the cracked material,” that would indeed have 1A implications. This charge does not. It is about breaking and entering.
Melber’s theory appears to be “but he obviously cracked the password because he WANTED to publish the material, so that’s 1A.” NO FFS. The First Amendment does not grant a categorical exception from espionage laws to anyone who puts on a journalist hat.
Could Assange legally MURDER to get a story? Of course not. Could he legally crack into a bank safe to get a story? Of course not. 1A protects him in taking the handoff of material after the fact. That’s not what he’s charged with. And that’s far from all he did.
