Not a state-sponsored and state-accredited propagandist, you mean?
It might be fair to say that Julian Assange encompassed the roles of journalist, editor and publisher in the same person, which is perhaps not the optimal setup although it's more or less what everyone publishing their work on substack does - but that's not a justification of state persecution.
It's undeniable that Wikileak's publication of the CableGate archive of State Department cables and the Vault7 archive of CIA hacking tool documentation was in the public interest. Some of the more important revelations include that the CIA has tools apparently designed for false-flag cyberattacks, that the State Department's claim to be concerned about human rights and democracy is not reflected in the content of their secret cables (which tend to focus on things like oil pipelines, arms deals, terrorist financing, economic deals, geopolitical maneuvering, etc.).
You might not like it, but it is legitimate journalism as the word is commonly defined.
So you're just going to assert, in drive-by fashion, that these journalists are government shills? Do you have any evidence that supports that claim? Do you say that about everyone that you disagree with?
It's kind of funny. At first I was going to say, what do you expect - a line on his CV 'worked as a medium for US propaganda'? But bizarrely enough, that's completely accurate. Michael Weiss is editor in chief at the 'Institute of Modern Russia.' It's part of Radio Free Europe [2], which is literally a propaganda outlet owned by the US government.
But the reason I decided to look this up is something much more simple than these facts. That Atlantic article reeks of state propaganda, and if it's not sending your propaganda detector to 11, you really need to get it tuned a bit - especially in this day and age. More often than not, you're not going to be able to find a link on somebody's CV or Wiki or whatever directly tying them to state interests, but I mean this just isn't how "normal" people think, behave, or write. It's like he's desperately trying to convince you of a position, by making you believe that thinking otherwise would be absurd. Note the stark similarities in style and rhetoric to something like this [3] piece from the NYtimes in the leadup to the Iraq War.
We don't license journalists in Western democracies (or Eastern ones, for that matter.) That's something that you see in places like Zimbabwe or Rwanda.
I do understand that neocons see limitations on domestic civil liberties as an arms race that they're losing to China and Russia, but this version of the Missile Gap is still largely a myth meant to secure the continual state financing of military and intelligence contractors.
Try calling yourself a journalist in Portugal (a western European democracy member of the EU and NATO) without being a part of the journalist trade association and see what happens if you get on the radar.
The first article says he wasn't a journalist because he wasn't accountable to anyone, and that he didn't filter what he published. I think he just didn't have the hubris to think he knows better then others what information should or shouldn't be free.
The 2nd article doesn't seem to claim he isn't a journalist at all. It even says "his own unique brand of journalism", which seems to be an acknowledgement that he is a journalist.
This has been debunked many times over. It's the Guardian journalists, David Leigh and Luke Harding, that published the password to the unredacted archives. Assange, on the other hand, was "meticulous about redacting names in the documents."
I don't think it's at all fair for you to demand high-effort rebuttals while putting in no effort on your own. You're asking people to respond to thousands of words that you didn't write, and you're not even engaging with the content of a 100-word reply that you specifically asked for.
https://apnews.com/article/52f4a2f42dba4f6b9afe026e57d51e96
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/julian-ass...