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Comment by SirensOfTitan | Hacker News Reader

Regardless of how you feel about Assange, what's happening with him should send shivers down your spine. His attempted prosecution attacks source protection, a very important component of investigative journalism.

In America, it seems the breakdown is:

* Are you an individual? If yes, when you have biases, make mistakes, or commit crimes, you are a villain and are given no benefit of the doubt.

* Are you a corporation or company? If yes, it's just business.

NYTimes, WaPo, TheIntercept, ..., all published disinformation to support their singular echo chamber narrative this past election cycle. Pretending that folks like Assange are deeply problematic but avoiding that same look into MSM is fairly bizarre.

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> His attempted prosecution attacks source protection

I don't know how source protection would apply to Julian Assange. He's not a source, he's the head of an international organization.

Also, source protection is a journalistic courtesy and is completely removed from the legal system.

Source protection is when journalists (including heads of international organizations engaged in journalism) protect the sources of their information that enables said journalism.

A "journalistic courtesy" that people like you would make illegal so as to shutdown journalism that goes against your agenda.

Not to mention the fact that he's not been found guilty by a court but has been locked up for years.

He isn't any more of a journalist than The Pirate Bay is.

I welcome contrary views when there's substance to them, but blind contrary statements like this don't really contribute anything to the discussion.

iow: expand

Paid "Journalists" aren't journalists any more than any random Twitter handle.

The sole basis for Politico was to distribute planted stories out of DC.

Read what he's written, wow. Very uniformed opinion.

https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/

This is a terrible piece. The implication is that Google was set up as a government spying program from the beginning through sneaky programs within DARPA. And this is just flat on its face ridiculous if you've spent any time at all with funding agencies or CS research.

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