[DiogenesKynikos]

A system of justice that can be abused to go after political enemies. The Espionage Act is a piece of anti-democratic legislation passed during WWI in order to shut down opposition to the war. It's ironic that you're portraying its use to go after a journalist as a democratic act.

[samdfonseca]

Just to be clear, 1600 of my coworkers are journalists, so I'm pretty confident in my support for journalists creds. Assange is not a journalist. Journalists don't encourage sources to break into classified systems and absolutely don't help them with it. When journalists get a stack of classified military docs, they don't indiscriminately release them to the public, they negotiate with the WH/DOD to avoid jeopardizing national security, weigh the public interest, and remove names to avoid putting people's lives at risk. See https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/26editors-note.html.... If you visited a newsroom, you might be surprised to find out that the overwhelming majority of journalists don't support Assange and his "I'm a journalist" defense.

[DiogenesKynikos]

What you write is a strong condemnation of the sorry state of journalism in America.

The New York Times withheld the story about Bush' illegal wiretapping program for a year, helping Bush secure reelection in 2004. They did so on flimsy "national security" grounds. The only grudgingly published the story when the journalist who had uncovered it threatened to publish it on his own. Some American news media is far too cozy with government. If they support the persecution of one of the most important journalists of our time, they're a truly rotten bunch.