I have just read a passionate criticism of Julian Assange by Huffington Post Former Associate News Editor Larry Womack. My attempt at a HuffPo comment is too long and so has become a blog post instead.
Julian Assange: is he a hero or a horror? He appears to be polarizingly one or the other these days or at least that is the picture being drawn.
Everyone plays a role in society, a function of their personality, parenting, health and worldview. In order to be healthy, a society needs many roles to be played. Julian Assange is clearly a shit disturber. We need shit disturbers in society at every point in history. Too many people are sheep and question little about what is done in their name. Dude is clearly no sheep!
“So it is difficult for me to look across the blogosphere today and see one show of support after another for a man who has consistently shown himself to have no ethical standards as a journalist, blogger or human being.”…Larry Womack, Huffington Post, Dec.4.2010
Some might accuse journalists these days of having an unacknowledged level of jealousy toward Julian Assange, self-identified non-journalist, who has exposed more secrets of late than any professional journalist. In Larry Womack’s Huffington Post piece, his point is clearly one of ethics and his great displeasure at the appearance of broad support for in his judgement an unethical WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.
I obviously cannot explain the basis of support for each person across the blogosphere but perhaps the difficulty in grasping support for Julian Assange is simply a misunderstanding of exactly what that support entails.
Maybe…it is support on balance but it is not all encompassing.
The Ethics Of Wikileaks
I have not commented on the ethics of Julian Assange online or among my friends because I feel that I would first have a duty to read every word he has released and I have not read every word WikiLeaks has released.
Along with other ethical considerations, I would personally not choose to release documents that would endanger a human being without soberly weighing how humanity would be served by endangering a life. I am confident based on what I am aware WikiLeaks has released that Julian and I would make different decisions on what to release and/or in what form. That said, that does not mean that I do not support him because partly I do, though I cannot identify my level of support if one had to put a number on it.
For me, WikiLeaks is a message much more important than whatever Julian has released yesterday or will release tomorrow. Julian Assange has elucidated a message about secrecy and power.
You know when you have one of those nanny shows and the parents are screaming “fix my problem child” and the nanny looks knowingly into the camera non-verbally communicating to the audience that the problem is much bigger than the child’s present behaviour. Julian may in fact simply be an anarchist and therefore problematic, though at this point in time I do not accept that characterization of him (or at least it is far too simplistic) but for me all this screaming about whether Julian is a hero or horror ignores the bigger picture of what the WikiLeaks phenomenon is elucidating about secrecy and power in our 2010 world. The ethics questions in each of those documents are to my mind much more important to the fabric of our society long term than the short term thinking noise we are presently focusing on.
Contrasting the ethics of mainstream journalism and WikiLeaks as Larry Womack has done is a valid comparison. But for me anyway, getting lost in the ethics of what Julian has released yesterday or today is missing a bigger picture question about what we release and what we keep secret and whether the balance is in our best interests OR whether it is simply power for power’s sake.
Is Julian a hero or a horror? I have not decided yet but I pray we will not all get lost in whatever moves threatened-secret-power inevitably makes to try and stop him and that we will choose instead to focus on the questions of secrecy and power that affect our 2010 lives.
“The question is not, as so many seem to believe, government corruption or WikiLeaks. The question is responsible coverage of legitimate government wrongdoing or lives lost on a megalomaniac's whim.”…Larry Womack, Huffington Post, Dec.4.2010
That is the question for Larry Womack. I have others.
- What do we keep secret in our 2010 world…and why? The stalkerazzi knows more about what schools the children of celebrities attend then we know about our own government.
- Do these 2010 secrets we keep serve our best interests or are they just secrecy for power’s sake?
- Who we are is where we draw our lines. Where should we draw those lines between secrecy and power?
- If we make our government’s actions more transparent will we get better government?
- Do more professional journalists need to be doing what Julian Assange is doing with the addition of the ethically hard work of redacting for innocence and safety? (though given that telling the truth is now being treated as treason, some might understandably be scared at the present intimidation tactics of the powerful)
We each have our own ethics. Julian Assange has his. Larry Womack, professional journalist has his. I have mine. Instead of focusing on the ethics of whatever Julian has released today, maybe we should be having a broader conversation about the ethics of secrecy and power. Because if we do not know what our government is doing in our name, then is it really OUR government?
Support for Julian Assange
Larry Womack seems confounded by what seems to him to be broad support for an unethical Julian Assange. Perhaps it is only that Julian Assange’s supporters are willing to take the bad with the good because they are so desperate for truth and for something that is for the PEOPLE and not the secret powerful! Maybe that!
Next Blogum: January 2011
Sage Spencer
P.S.
Before the June 2009 Webby Awards, The Huffington Post had a blog posting asking for five word entries for Arianna Huffington’s Webby acceptance speech. I think it would be a fascinating posting to do the same for “What WikiLeaks means to you.”
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