COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW- 18/04/2019
Mathew Ingram
As the imminent release of the (no doubt heavily redacted) Mueller report continues to suck all the oxygen out of the US media industry, other important news events are at risk of being overlooked, and the Julian Assange case is arguably one of them, despite Assange’s infamy. The WikiLeaks founder was taken into custody last week—at the request of US officials—at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he had spent the past seven years. Some of the fears about his capture representing a threat to freedom of the press seem to have subsided, since the indictment filed by the Department of Justice focuses primarily on Assange’s alleged offer to help crack a password, a breach of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.