I feel curious about this whole saga. Maybe someone knows more than I. Regarding the US diplomatic cables, the whistleblower never disclosed information to the public directly but to Wikileaks, a whistleblower outlet. Wikileaks is Australian (I think) so the whistleblower might have been accused of treason if the information went to an enemy country. Australia is not an enemy so treason was off the table but espionage laws were employed.
Wikileaks then gave their information to newspapers like The Guardian, The New York Times, and Der Spiegel, and didn't actually release anything to the public directly. The public had never even heard of Wikileaks.
Those newspapers were never charged with anything. Yes, Wikileaks provided the information given them by a whistleblower but the decision to publish was made by the media involved. They, or their editors, were never charged.
For some reason, Daniel Ellsberg was not charged with anything in 1971 for his release of the damaging Pentagon Papers. Mark Felt provided information on the Watergate scandal in 2005 to Woodward and Bernstein and neither he nor they were ever charged with anything.
Why was only Assange charged and not Wikileaks as an organization and the other media who did the actual publishing?