The “Assange Precedent”: The Threat to the Media Posed by the Trump Administration’s Prosecution of Julian Assange
The “Assange Precedent”: The Threat to the Media Posed by the Trump Administration’s Prosecution of Julian Assange March 2019 Read the PDF version here . Leer en español aquí A precedent with profound implications for press freedom New York Times : “An indictment centering on the publication of information of public interest… would create a precedent with profound implications for press freedoms.” [1] “Mr. Assange is not a traditional journalist, but what he does at WikiLeaks has also been difficult to distinguish in a legally meaningful way from what traditional news organizations, like The New York Times, do every day: seek out and publish information that officials would prefer to be kept secret, including classified national security matters.” [2] David McCraw, lead lawyer for The New York Times : “I think the prosecution of him [Assange] would be a very, very bad precedent for publishers. From that incident, from everything I know, he’s sort of in a classic publ