From WNYC in New York, this is on the media.

Brooke Gladstone is out this week.

I'm Bob Garfield.

What you're seeing on your screen right now,

exclusive images showing Julian Assange being carried out of the Ecuadorian embassy after his arrest.

Now, there's an image for you.

Julian Assange, wiki-leaker, fugitive, slayer of dragons and self-described shiner of light into the dark recesses of government power,

being carried bodily from his former refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Police have confirmed he's being held on behalf of U.S. authorities.

And now he's facing prosecution for allegedly trying to help imprisoned Leaker Chelsea Manning

crack a government password, conspiracy to commit breaking and entering, basically.

So the humiliating eviction isn't the end of the Assange story, but that's not all it isn't.

It also, most likely, isn't a blow to the free press, despite the immediate hand-wringing.

It's a very serious assault on the First Amendment, a clear attempt to rescind the freedom of the press,

essentially. Every journalist in the world should be raising their voices as loudly as possible

to protest and denounce this. The press is indeed under attack in this country, but not in this case,

because WikiLeaks is not and has never been the press.

Journalism reports or opines on events or phenomena along with history, context, multiple viewpoints,

and potential consequences. Wikileaks gets hold of information and dumps it indiscriminately, absent context, absent motive, and certainly absent thorough reckoning of consequences.

This Assange himself told me a decade ago.

Wikileaks is not a normal news organization. We are a public service to whistleblowers who are trying to get

their messages out. Our judgment would be a form of censorship of those whistleblowers.

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