What if the AP had been communicating with Julian Assange?

[sabrina 1]

25. It is the Government's job to protect information if leaking of that information would

cause harm to the country. It is NOT the Government's job to classify everything it is doing in order to keep the public from knowing how their government operates.

Eg, Wikileaks approached the US Govt before leaking anything asking for their help with redacting anything that might be harmful. The Govt did not respond.

Even after the release of the War video and War logs, the Govt wasn't, publicly anyhow, particularly concerned.

It was only after Assange revealed in an interview that Wikileaks had information on Big Banks that the Govt went after them.

So there are two issues involved. Why would the Govt want to hide information on Bank corruption is the question that SHOULD have been asked by the MSM. IF we had a truly free press.

The second is freedom of the press. It is their job to inform the public of what their government is up to. It is NOT their job to withhold information from the public that might embarrass the government or expose corruption.

However we have reached a point in this country and elsewhere, ie, China, Europe and of course in many other nations, where Governments and the Press work together to withhold information from the public. Whistleblowers are persecuted and punished, they can no longer trust the media when they have information that is important for the public to know. That is why Wikileaks was created in the first place and long before they released info on the US, they had been exposing corruption of governments and banks like Iceland and Kenya and gave Whistle Blowers a safe place to expose such corruption.

We should all be angry when any government tries to punish the free flow of information.

Imagine if governments and banks and corporations realized that IF they engage in corrupt behavior we have a strong Press that will reveal that corruption??

If the Government is so inept that it cannot protect legitimately harmful information from getting out, then classifies everything in order to stop the press from doing its job, we get illegal wars like Iraq and millions harmed. We get corrupt Banks crashing the world's economy etc, again harming millions around the world.

A healthy democracy does not fear a free press. That Manning and Wikileaks and OWS were targeted so diligently tells us we do not have a healthy democracy and we need to do something about it.