And even if it were the Russians who provided the material to Assange, the emails were accurate, meaning it is irrelevant who the source of the leak was. The Wall Street Journal's and other major media's anonymous drop boxes prove that. They don't need or want to know the source if newsworthy documents are authenticated.
If a foreign power inserted fabricated emails into a U.S. presidential campaign, that would be sabotage through disinformation. But that's not what happened. The emails were information, not disinformation.
What Really Happened
The truth is that a vindictive U.S. government was exposed with clear evidence of committing war crimes, meddling in other nations' internal affairs and spying on adversaries, allies and citizens alike and in response imprisoned and charged the journalist who revealed this wrongdoing. It is an attack on press freedom usually associated with the most aggressive totalitarian regimes, going to the core of how the West defines itself: as a democracy that upholds the right to criticize government or authoritarianism that crushes dissent.
"The really horrifying thing about this case is the lawlessness that has developed: The powerful can kill without fear of punishment and journalism is transformed into espionage," said Melzer. "It is becoming a crime to tell the truth."
Melzer told the Republik:
"Imagine a dark room. Suddenly, someone shines a light on the elephant in the room on war criminals, on corruption. Assange is the man with the spotlight. The governments are briefly in shock, but then they turn the spotlight around with accusations of rape. It is a classic maneuver when it comes to manipulating public opinion. The elephant once again disappears into the darkness, behind the spotlight. And Assange becomes the focus of attention instead, and we start talking about whether Assange is skateboarding in the embassy or whether he is feeding his cat correctly. Suddenly, we all know that he is a rapist, a hacker, a spy and a narcissist. But the abuses and war crimes he uncovered fade into the darkness."
A plaque in honor of Assange's award, reads: "For bravery in the face of a grave threat to Freedom of the Press and for journalistic accomplishments in revealing crimes of the state."
Plague to be presented to Assange.
(Image by (Made by Roy de Visser in Sydney, Australia)) Details DMCA
The Gary Webb Award is the third prize Assange has won while in prison, and the first from the United States. Recognition of the threat his case poses to press freedom grows.
Past winners of the Gary Webb Freedom of the Press Award are Sam Parry (2016), who created Consortium News' website in 1995, and filmmaker Oliver Stone (2017).
History of the Award
About the origin of the award, Parry wrote: "The award is named in honor of investigative reporter Gary Webb who in 1996 courageously revived interest in one of the darkest scandals of the 1980s, the Reagan administration's tolerance of cocaine trafficking by the CIA-organized Nicaraguan Contra rebels who were fighting to overthrow Nicaragua's leftist Sandinista government."
The Contra-Cocaine scandal was originally exposed by Associated Press reporters Robert Parry and Brian Barger in 1985, but the major U.S. newspapers accepted the Reagan administration's denials and treated the story as a "conspiracy theory."
So, when Webb revived the story in 1996 for The San Jose Mercury News and described how some of the Contra cocaine fueled the spread of crack across urban America, the major newspapers again rallied to the defense of the Contras and the Reagan administration's legacy.
The assault on Webb was led by The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times and was so ferocious that Webb's editors at the Mercury News sacrificed him to protect their own careers. Webb found himself cast out from the profession that he loved.
It didn't even matter that an internal CIA investigation by Inspector General Frederick Hitz confirmed, in 1998, that the CIA was aware of the Contra cocaine trafficking but had put its goal of ousting the Sandinistas ahead of any responsibility to expose the Contra criminality.
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