Eli Lake, Columnist

Is Assange a Journalist? It Depends What Year You Ask

The data dump in 2010 had many markers of public-interest reporting. Some of WikiLeaks’s more recent actions clearly don’t.

April 17, 2019 at 3:25 PM UTC

By Eli Lake

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

Why is Julian Assange being charged for one of his most defensible actions?
Photographer: Jack Taylor/Getty Images

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

As Julian Assange awaits his extradition hearing in the U.K., the debate over what to call him and his organization, WikiLeaks, is once again important.

Depending on who is speaking, Assange is either a publisher, a hacker or the head of a hostile intelligence service. It can all be a bit confusing.