WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Wednesday that a US government effort to prosecute him should serve as a warning to journalists in the United States.
Assange, in an interview with the MSNBC television network, said there has been a “quite deliberate attempt to split off our organization from the First Amendment protections that are afforded to all publishers.”
The WikiLeaks founder said he considers himself a journalist and “we all have to stick together to resist this sort of reinterpretation of the First Amendment,” which guarantees the right to free speech.
“We have seen these statements, that The New York Times is, you know, also being looked at in terms of whether they have engaged in what they call ‘conspiracy to commit espionage,'” he said.
“If they want to push the line that when a newspaperman talks to someone in the government about looking for things relating to potential abuses, that that is a conspiracy to commit espionage, then that’s going to take out all the good government journalism that occurs in the United States,” he said.
Assange added that if the “Washington authorities target us and destroy us” other journalists should be worried because “they’re going to be next.”
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