The central point of this article is that there's a fundamental difference in a person's culpability if they help someone to procure secrets, vs if they just re

The central point of this article is that there's a fundamental difference in a person's culpability if they help someone to procure secrets, vs if they just receive and publish those secrets. Therefore (the idea goes) he's not entitled to be seen as a "journalist" any longer. Besides the fact that there's no such legal status as "journalist" in criminal law anyway, it's clearly a pretty shallow and disingenuous attempt to try establish an arbitrary line between Assange and other journalists. By analogy, there's no real difference in knowingly receiving stolen property, vs assisting in stealing it yourself. They're both crimes that you can be put on trial for. Journalists could have been accused of helping Snowden get away with it too, but the media closed ranks around them for some reason. What's the real reason Assange is being thrown under the bus?