If Assange Burgled Some Computers, He Stopped Being a Journalist
WikiLeaks and its creator can't shelter themselves inside the cloak of journalism and the truth if he helped hack the U.S. government.
He’s a messenger. And other things.
Photographer: Jack Taylor/Getty Images EuropeJulian Assange was marched out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London on Thursday looking, in videos of his arrest, like a cranky, beleaguered version of Santa Claus. Or, depending on your perspective, a tired, down-on-his-luck burglar from a Dickens novel.
He may be both, in his mind, or just one or the other in the minds of his admirers and detractors. What will matter in court is whether the WikiLeaks founder committed a crime. And that should matter as well in the debate about whether he’s a journalist and publisher — and was therefore acting in a way that the U.S. Constitution and the First Amendment should protect (a salient issue if the U.S. government successfully extradites him from the U.K. to face charges).