Julian Assange. (photo: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty)
NPR
Host Demands That Assange Do Something Its Own Reporters Are Told Never to Do
By Naomi LaChance, The
Intercept
18 August 16
In
a ten-minute interview aired
Wednesday morning, NPR’s David Greene asked Wikileaks founder Julian Assange
five times to reveal the sources of the leaked information he has published on
the internet.
A
major tenet of American journalism is that reporters protect their sources.
Wikileaks is certainly not a traditional news organization, but Greene’s
persistent attempts to get Assange to violate confidentiality was alarming,
especially considering that there has been no challenge to the authenticity of
the material in question.
In
the interview, conducted over Skype, Greene pressed Assange to verify the
theory that the 20,000 leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee
that Wikileaks published came from Russia.
“Did
those hacks that Wikileaks released, did those emails come from Russia?” Greene
asked.
“Well
we don’t comment as to our sources,” Assange replied. He remains confined in
the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he has lived since 2012, despite a
U.N. panel’s ruling that he has been
“arbitrarily detained.”
Greene
brought it up again: “Every cyber expert who’s looked at this has said it’s
Russia. Are you telling me that that information did not come to you from
Russia?”
Greene
was exaggerating: Cybersecurity consultant Matt Tait recently told Politifact that “the
consensus that Russia hacked the DNC is at this point very strong, albeit not
unanimous.”
Assange
replied to Greene: “No cyber expert has said that our emails that we have
published have come from Russia, what they have said is that they have looked
at some of the hacking of the DNC over the last two years and said that the
malware in that hacking appeared to be Russian.”
Greene
asked again: “Do you know where these emails came from?”
Assange
replied: “Yes, I know where they came from. They came from the DNC.”
NPR’s
own ethics handbook urges journalists to respect
and protect sources: “As an ethical matter, we would not want to reveal the
identity of an anonymous source unless that person has consented to the
disclosure. That’s why we take the granting of anonymity seriously.”
NPR’s coverage of James
Risen, the New York Times reporter who was pressured by the
government to reveal his sources, was more respectful of the obligation to keep
promises. Even Terry Gross, the notoriously tough interviewer who hosts NPR
member station WHYY’s Fresh Air, did not ask Risen to
reveal his sources.
Mark
Memmott, NPR supervising editor for standards and practices, told The
Intercept in an email: “It’s our job to ask people — experts,
politicians, CEOs and even other journalists — where they’re getting their
information. We should always be checking the credibility of our sources, no
matter who they are. Mr. Assange was free to answer or not.”
Later
in the Assange interview, Greene asked again: “Do you know the source that
provided them to you?”
Assange
replied: “We don’t comment on sourcing, because it makes it easier for any
investigation.”
Greene
began to ask again: “You brought up this question of whether there’s an
argument that you’re a threat to national security. There are cyber security
experts who say that someone in Russia, perhaps the Russian government, was
responsible for getting this information to you. If you indeed –”
But
Assange interrupted: “No there aren’t,” he said. “They’re speaking about the
hacks of the DNC, not our publications. There’s a difference.”
Greene
again: “If the United States government thought that you might have knowledge
that a foreign government hacked into a political institution in the United
States” — here Assange sighed — “during a presidential election …” Assange cut
in: “They haven’t asked.”
Greene
also referred to Wikileaks’ “alleged sources in Russia” and “actual sources in
Russia.”
Finally,
Greene asked why Wikileaks is offering a $20,000 reward for information about the
death of Seth Rich, a Democratic National Committee staffer who was shot and
killed on July 10 in Washington, D.C.
“Any
allegation that someone has been murdered because they are a Wikileaks source,
even if it only has a small probability of it being true, is very concerning to
us,” Assange said. “We have a perfect record in protecting the identity of our
sources and we want to establish quickly exactly what the circumstances were in
Seth Rich’s killing.”
“Was
he a source of yours?” Greene asked.
Assange
replied: “We don’t disclose sources, even dead sources.”
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