Joe Lauria discusses the dangerous legal precedent set by the case against Julian Assange, whose actions in leaking government documents are not categorically different from those of a journalist. As Glenn Greenwald points out, there’s no “license” that makes someone a journalist, and no way to definitively identify an act of journalism—the first amendment must apply to everyone, regardless of their character and especially of the impact to the government of what they write.

Discussed on the show:

• “After Assange’s Espionage Act Indictment, Police Move Against More Journalists for Publishing Classified Material” (Consortium News)
• Official Secrets Act 1989
• United States diplomatic cables leak
• “ROBERT PARRY: All Investigative Journalists Do What Julian Assange Did” (Consortium News)
• “5/31/19 Trevor Timm on the Century’s Greatest 1st Amendment Threat” (The Libertarian Institute)
• “5/31/19 Daniel Ellsberg on the Importance of Whistleblowers” (The Libertarian Institute)
• “The indictment of Assange is a blueprint for making journalists into felons” (The Washington Post)
• “Under Intense Pressure to Silence Wikileaks, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Proposed Drone Strike on Julian Assange – True Pundit” (True Pundit)

Joe Lauria is the editor-in-chief at Consortium News. He is a former UN correspondent and wrote at the Boston Globe and Wall Street Journal. You can follow him on Twitter @unjoe.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Kesslyn Runs, by Charles Featherstone; NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Inc.; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; and LibertyStickers.com.

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