[krapp]

Then why bother with the term at all? What does the "free" in "free press" mean?

The First Amendment of the US constitution forbids Congress from abridging the freedom of speech and of the press. Although the term "free press" isn't specifically mentioned, if one cannot decide what does and does not qualify as "the press" then everything from espionage to outright falsehood can equally be considered an expression of "the press."

As this is not the case, then "the press" and "the free press" must have some established definition, which means some qualifiers must have been decided upon. And yet it doesn't seem as if the US has fallen prey to wholesale government silencing of critics or censorship of criticism either in the mainstream or alternative press, as a result of such definition.

So while it may be possible that defining "the press" could result in abusing that definition to silence critics, it doesn't appear to be inevitable.

Therefore, it can safely be argued whether or not Wikileaks qualifies as the "free press" without fear of a slippery slope to press censorship in general.

[Nasrudith]

You might need a refresher of US history. It can and has been abused in the past and only through fighting back hard have we gotten the status quo of today.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States

If the spooks of weren't so damn aggeessive that they spoiled a can't lose trial Ellswood would have been fucked for the Pentagon Papers as there is no public interest defense against the Espionage Act.

To be frank the Espionage act is an unconstitutional relic of past mistakes that should have a stake driven through its heart, head chopped off and stuffed with garlic and the body burned outside in and left in sunlight.

Falsehood /is/ protected. It is a civil matter at very worst. Because if it isn't then you can have prosecutions for "lies" that are really inconvenient facts.

The current jurisprudence /as it should be/ is that the press is an activity and not a position.