Assange was convicted via plea deal under the Espionage Act that he had disclosed national defence cables to the public.

I don't want to get bogged in the weeds on the whole back-and-forth regarding who blames who for how the cables were published in full because multiple parties blame each other, and it's not really relevant to my point that this is not at all the same situation the WaPo or NYT found themselves in. They had a leak from a credible source that the current US president was about to command an illegal attack and extradition on Venezuala and Maduro.

They chose not to publish any information at all because it may forewarn Venezeula, thereby potentially impacting US troops if they ignore the leak and proceed anyway, thus deciding for the US public that the information is not in their public interest and keeping it from them. I think it is more than obvious that the information would have been of enormous public value and could have averted this whole dilemma. It is very likely they did this at the direction of the Trump administration.

It's worth noting that the NYT did exactly the same thing about the illegal NSA wiretapping program back in 2004. They knew GW Bush's admin was breaking the law and spying on the entire US public (via whistleblowers releasing data to them), but sat on their release at the direct requests of the Whitehouse, allowing Bush to secure his second term in Nov 2004, publishing multiple articles supporting and defending the Patriot Act and warrantless surveillance in the interim, and only finally releasing the article in late 2005 well over a year after they first had the story ready to go - and only because one of their reporters was sick of fighting for editorial management to allow the story to go out, and was instead publishing it on his own in a book.

https://www.removepaywall.com/search?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wired.com%2F2008%2F03%2Ftimes-reporter%2F

The US establishment media choose presidents. Fuck 'the public interest'.