Monday, November 28, 2011

Is Walkley winner Julian Assange a true journalist?

There has long been disagreement over whether Julian Assange is a dinkum journo. The Walkley judges certainly think he qualifies, having just awarded him a bloody great gong. And Margaret Simmons of Crikey certainly reckons he is.

But I suspect this is mainly because Assange has stuck it to the Yanks big time. I doubt very much he would have qualified in their eyes were he not such an anti-American leftie.

Call me old fashioned, but I thought journalists actually had to write stuff themselves. The Wikileaks founder has done very little of that. But he's certainly published mountains of correspondence that others have written (and not for publication). So he's not really a journo; he's more of an online press baron, really. Yep, he's kind of a hip young leftie Rupert Murdoch who doesn't pay his, er, employees (just nicks their work outright, actually).

And it's interesting that all the leftie hacks are arcing up about Rupert's tolerance of phone hacking at one of his papers, making all these insinuations that it's going on throughout the rest of his empire as well. Being such noble defenders of the right to privacy, you'd think they might be a tad annoyed about Assange leaking all that secret information, particularly when doing so could easily have put innocent lives at risk.

But nup. All transgressions are forgiven as long as you hate what they hate. Hell, they'll even laud (and award) you for 'em!

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