It’s been a month of mixed messages from Washington, D.C., but then, that place is a place where people speak out of both sides of their mouths all the time.
This week started with Julian Assange winning another brief reprieve in the U.S. government’s war against a free press, as a British court ruled that he has a right to appeal extradition to the United States for his political show trial. The Brits aren’t stupid, and when they asked the U.S. to give assurances that Assange had First Amendment rights, they were not assured when the U.S. responded that Assange would have the right to raise First Amendment arguments at his trial. That’s not what the British had asked.
(By the way, that photo up there? taken in February 2020. That’s how long the ordeal has continued.)
The persecution of Assange continues just three weeks after the White House issued a statement on World Press Freedom Day that said, in part:
“Journalism should not be a crime anywhere on Earth. On World Press Freedom Day, we honor the bravery and sacrifice of journalists and media workers around the world risking everything in pursuit of truth.”
Lost in the discussion is the basic fact that the first 10 Amendments did not establish any of those rights in the first place. Theoretically, the Bill of Rights “secured” those rights — in the sense of the Declaration of Independence’s assertion that governments are formed to secure rights that are certain and unalienable. In practice, of course, governments fight those rights at every turn.
We are born with the right to speak freely, to worship as we please, to assemble peaceably, to publish what we choose to publish, to carry weapons of self-defense, to refuse to self-incriminate, and all the other rights mentioned in the Bill of Rights, but not because the document gave us those rights.
We have those rights to begin with, and the document delineates a particular set of rights that government may not abridge. Journalists do not have “First Amendment rights.” They have the same natural rights as any human, and the First Amendment prohibits the government from trampling on those rights.
At least, that was the idea 248 years ago. How far we have come.
