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With headlines and newscasts having covered the career and imprisonment of Julian Assange for years, his brother Gabriel Shipton said he wanted to offer another perspective to this important story.

“With this documentary, it’s really an effort to close that gap and bring people a different side of the story that they might not have heard before and really get to know Julian in a different way,” Gabriel said.

On Tuesday night, Gabriel and his father John Shipton brought their documentary, “Ithaka: A Fight To Free Julian Assange,” to Syracuse University. Over a hundred students, staff and locals gathered in the Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium in the Newhouse School of Public Communications for a screening of the film and a Q&A with the Shiptons.

The documentary follows John, Assange’s wife Stella Morris and their campaign to free Assange, an Australian journalist and computer programmer. Assange founded the media organization WikiLeaks, which has released thousands of classified documents from various government and corporate entities since 2006.

In 2010, the site gained national attention when it released a series of leaks implicating the U.S. military in the murder and torture of innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. indicted Assange on 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act in 2019, and he faces a 175-year prison sentence if extradited from the United Kingdom to the U.S.

Freshman broadcast and digital journalism student Gabe Howe said he knew of Assange’s story before going to Monday’s event, but was intrigued with the chance to hear about it differently.

“It’s a unique opportunity to get the other side of this, especially with the man’s family in the room,” Howe said. “In my experience that doesn’t happen very often.”

Gabriel Shipton worked as a producer on the film and stressed that with this documentary, they are really trying to tell a different side of the story. Gabriel said production of the film started in 2019, when John was traveling around the world advocating for Assange. It only seemed natural to document John’s efforts, Gabriel said. Now, the Shiptons are hoping to share the story with others.

“We want to hopefully educate students to what’s going on here in this unprecedented prosecution,” Gabriel said.

After the screening, the Shiptons touched on issues of journalism and freedom of speech during the Q&A. Senior Naomi Weinflash said she went to the event for her Communications Law class and felt that the discussions about these issues really aligned with the curriculum, and added hearing directly from the Shiptons brought the story to life.

Despite the long journey of advocacy the Shiptons have gone through, spanning years, John said that the support he’s seen around the world helps him to keep going.

“I’ve found that people around the world have, within their hearts, a revulsion to injustice and a hunger to see justice, and that’s pretty heartening,” John said.

The Shiptons both warned of the dangers of criminalizing journalists who exercise their First Amendment right to free speech.

“There is no America without free speech. What is it that you have with the constraints on free speech? What are you left with? This is a very serious question,” John said.

Published on March 29, 2023 at 12:10 am