The prosecution of Julian Assange is finally over after the Australian WikiLeaks founder agreed to plead guilty to violating the U.S. Espionage Act on Monday. That’s better than the worst-case scenario—trying Assange in a U.S. court for exposing war crimes—but the case should have never gotten this far.
The shameful, years-long saga has left the U.S.’s global credibility on press freedom severely diminished. Even worse, it has put national security journalists on notice that the U.S. government stands ready and willing to criminalize their work at its discretion.
Reporters Without Borders ranked the U.S. 55th in its Press Freedom Index this year, citing the Assange case. Foreign adversaries, notably China and Russia, have regularly referenced the charges against Assange to question our moral authority to oppose their own crackdowns on free expression: Who are we to talk when our government considers obtaining and publishing government secrets–essentially the job description for investigative journalists–a felony under the Espionage Act?
