Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, was freed from prison last week, which is expected to end a decade-long legal saga over the publication of US military secrets in 2010.
He stands to walk away a free man if he takes the guilty plea deal on the table, given the time he already spent in the UK prison.
The question now is: what is the legacy that WikiLeaks leaves behind for investigative journalism and how will this case shape international journalism?
In a LinkedIn Live Q&A this week, we spoke about this with James Ball, who worked for three months on Cablegate, the publication of those 250,000 US embassy cables. He is now the first political editor of The New European and has previously written for The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the Guardian, the Washington Post and BuzzFeed.
He played a key role in the Pultizer-Prize-winning coverage of the NSA leaks by Edward Snowden, as well as the Offshore Leaks and the HSBC files.
One key message from Ball: Julian Assange might have been difficult to work with, but he was a catalyst - even if not deliberately - for greater collaboration in investigative journalism that is still enduring.
From our archives:
- WikiLeaks publishes all 251,000 US embassy cables
- Cablegate: How and why the world's media chose to publish the WikiLeaks embassy cables
- 'There was never an average day': James Ball on being WikiLeaks' in-house journalist
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