Julian Assange

In his first appearance after his prolonged detention, Julian Assange speaks during a hearing at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on Oct. 1, 2024.

AP Photo/Pascal Bastien

His prosecution is over, but the implications for journalists are alarming.

After pleading guilty to charges brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, Assange is the first person to be convicted under the Espionage Act for speaking with a source, receiving classified documents, and publishing them. In other words, things that journalists at news outlets do every day.

This is why Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) led a coalition of virtually every major civil liberties and human rights organization in the country to denounce the unprecedented case as a clear and present danger to press freedom.

  1. Photojournalist John Harrington at the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021

    Another record year for press-freedom violations in the US

    Arrests/Prosecutions Article

    While we did not see the scope of national social-justice protests of 2020—a year in which journalists were arrested or assaulted on average more than once a day—2021 still outpaced the years before it for press-freedom violations. We systematically capture this data in the US Press Freedom Tracker, where Freedom of the Press Foundation, in partnership with the Committee to Protect Journalists and other press freedom groups, has documented aggressions against journalists in the United States since 2017.