Having politicians say on media that you should get drone killed or get the death penalty for being a journalist do get personal, as does it when the candidate

Having politicians say on media that you should get drone killed or get the death penalty for being a journalist do get personal, as does it when the candidate is implicated as interfering with a police investigation (US diplomats in Sweden was documented to have visited the prosecutor in the case of Sweden vs Assange and put diplomatic pressure on it). Plenty of commenters during the 2016 election concluded that Assange had a personal vendetta against Hillary Clinton. But it doesn't matter much as any leaked document always get studied and verified as much as it is possible. If the leak information is a source code for a state written virus, NSA documents, or banking information, in the end it is journalists at news papers that dig further, verify and follows up on the leaked information.