What the U.S. charges against Julian Assange mean for press freedom

The United States today filed 17 new charges against Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks. Assange is charged with publishing classified material. The Justice Department says they charged this because he revealed the names of confidential sources.
I believe this was announced as a distraction from the Trump administration's excruciatingly bad infrastructure week.
The decision to charge Assange in this manner should be of great concern to press freedom advocates.
Journalists also publish classified material.
Reactions from news reporters and observers on Twitter, below.

The Espionage indictment of Assange for publishing is an extremely dangerous, frontal attack on the free press. Bad, bad, bad.
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) May 23, 2019

Concur. Xeni “worse than a Jew” Jardin here, Julian Assange threatened and harassed me. Today's news is extremely bad. https://t.co/vTYgRnGc8B
— Xeni Jardin (@xeni) May 23, 2019

It was probably unwise for Julian Assange to help elect the party with less sympathetic views toward press freedom.
— Andrew Prokop (@awprokop) May 23, 2019

NEWS: Prosecutors are charging Julian Assange with the espionage act in an 18 count indictment. These new charges are crossing over into very dangerous territory. The espionage act could be used against reporters who publish critical information. https://t.co/SE1uCVOp0L
— Yashar Ali