"Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself," goes the opening paragraph of Janet Malcolm's stone-cold media-ethics classic The Journalist and the Murderer, "knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse." As an assessment of the morals of journalism and non-fiction storytelling more broadly, Malcolm's take is remorseless.
"She's a bit bleaker than I am," U.S. documentarian Laura Poitras says of Malcolm's despairing view of the journalist-subject relationship. "Her description of the dynamic is a little more vicious. I don't think it's always morally … how does she describe it? 'Morally indefensible'? I'm not sure I agree with that."
As both a journalist and an artist, Poitras – who shared a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for her reporting on the U.S. National Security Agency spy program in 2014 and, the same year, took the Oscar for best documentary feature for Citizenfour, her film about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden – has made a career of gauging the morally defensible. Where many decried Snowden as a traitor scheming against the U.S. government, Citizenfour develops a portrait of him as a paragon of civic virtue, who came by his convictions honestly. With her latest film, Risk, things get a bit muddier.
In 2011, Poitras began filming behind-the-scenes at WikiLeaks: the non-profit website that came to prominence in 2010 after publishing secret military info leaked by U.S. military private Chelsea Manning. She was drawn in by the outlet's combative, take-no-prisoners attitude and (Risk suggests) by the charisma of WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange. "The film charts an arc that begins with a certain optimism," Poitras explains over the phone from New York. "I thought the journalism they were doing in 2010, from the Chelsea Manning leaks, was really vital and confronted mainstream media to look at these wars and look at U.S. foreign policy more closely. I think I arrive at a much more pessimistic moment, right now."
Assault allegations levelled against WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange changed things for Poitras while she was making Risk. ‘I’m not interested in excusing anyone’s abusive behaviour,’ she says.
Praxis Films
Between 2011 and today, a lot changed. In late 2010, Assange faced sexual-assault allegations from two Swedish women. In 2012, he was granted political asylum at the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he still resides. In 2016, during the presidential primaries, WikiLeaks posted e-mails from then-presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton's much-ballyhooed private server and information suggesting that the Democratic National Committee had conspired against fellow then-hopeful Bernie Sanders.
Perhaps most crucially, Poitras and Assange had a major falling out. In 2013, Poitras was contacted by a man named "Citizenfour," who turned out to be Snowden. That summer, she put the WikiLeaks filming on hold to film interviews with Snowden in a Hong Kong hotel. Assange wanted Poitras to bring the NSA intel to WikiLeaks. She refused. "I just couldn't," she explains. "I still support their journalism, but some of the decisions they've made around not redacting things, those are different decisions than I wound up making."
The assault allegations against Assange – as well as those later levelled against hacktivist fellow traveller Jacob Appelbaum, who appears in both Risk and Citizenfour – also changed things. "I'm not interested in excusing anyone's abusive behaviour," says Poitras. "As a filmmaker, and as a woman, I'm not going to defend that. And I don't defend many things that Julian says in the film. But I think you can still defend someone's right to publish."
It's clear that Poitras is still wrestling with these higher-order questions. At multiple times during our conversation, she throws my questions back to me: "What do you think about?" "What would you do?" "Why is that troubling?" It doesn't seem defensive, but rather honest and inquisitive, the gesture of someone who spent years grappling with imposing ethical problems and has the wisdom of knowing there are no quick, easy, cut-and-dry answers.
"I'm interested in people that you can agree with, but also be totally turned off or offended by," she says. "The film is a film about power, right? A lot of Julian's philosophies are just power strategies: Who do you sacrifice for political gains? What's most pragmatic? I think this is what drives him."
Poitras says Risk is about power, which she thinks drives Assange.
Praxis Films
Such Machiavellian manoeuvring, as Risk shows, has pushed Assange into the wider cultural spotlight. He was portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch in the execrable 2013 biopic The Fifth Estate, a film that quickly seized on WikiLeaks's headline-grabbing story. Poitras herself appeared as a character in Oliver Stone's more recent blockbuster Snowden, played by fellow Oscar-winner Melissa Leo. But Poitras hasn't seen the film and can't comment on the veracity of the performance.
"I had a very unpleasant meeting with Oliver Stone," Poitras says. "I wish a better filmmaker had taken it on. If it had to happen, I wish it was a better filmmaker. I also realize that's the way Hollywood works. If something like this happens that shifts the zeitgeist, there's going to be films that come out."
Poitras prefers Mr. Robot, TV's prestige hacker-thriller, to the more conventional, cash-in biopics. "It's not based on a real event, but it's an example of entertainment capturing a real-world moment and reflecting it back," she says. "Unfortunately, Hollywood feels like it's usually trying to be reactive or capitalize on something, instead of trying to unpack it."
It sums up Poitras's knack, as both a journalist and an artist: valiantly documenting and depicting our increasingly slippery, ethically compromised real world and diligently unpacking the complexities of right now as they continue to unfold.
Risk opens May 12 in Toronto and Montreal.