In a different era of American history – say, just a few decades ago – it would have been unthinkable for a major U.S. journalist to behave as if ferreting out government secrets and sharing them with the public was a bad thing.
But Steve Kroft of CBS’ “60 Minutes” acted in his interview with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as if Kroft had never heard of the First Amendment, as he took the side of the U.S. government in favor of hiding as many secrets as it wants from the American people.
At one point, Kroft suggested that Assange deserved no legal protections because he had “played outside the rules; you’ve played outside the United States’ rules. … There’s a special set of rules in the United States for disclosing classified information.”
It took the Australian Assange to remind Kroft that “there’s not a special set of rules for publishers to disclose classified information. There is the First Amendment. It covers the [WikiLeaks] case.” But Kroft remained the clueless one, insisting that “if they let you get away with it, then they are encouraging…”
Assange cut him off, “Then what? They will have to have freedom of the press.” But Kroft still worried about the precedent of U.S. government secrets being exposed to the public if a severe example wasn’t made of Assange and WikiLeaks.
“That it's encouragement to you,” Kroft said, “or to some other organization … to publish information much more dangerous than this information."
Assange responded: “If we're talking about creating threats to small publishers to stop them publishing, the U.S. has lost its way. It has abrogated its founding traditions. It has thrown the First Amendment in the bin. Because publishers must be free to publish.”
Among the “60 Minutes” viewers amazed at this exchange – and by how far the once-aggressive news program and American journalism in general have sunk – was David Swanson, who comments on Kroft’s bizarre display in this guest essay:
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