That's a good point, that what he did is sort of vaguely in the realm of Assange, they're both mostly a political type of threat, yet they're seen as kind of totally different categories of people.

I guess they needle the system in different ways. I feel like Ross is actually a bigger threat. Wikileaks is more famous, but exposing dirt like that, while I'm sure it's annoying to them, doesn't seem like a systematic threat to anything. Ross was a pretty direct threat to all the interests surrounding drug illegality.

And then of course people are just kind of used to "drugs = bad", and they know what a drug lord is. So then they just cast Ross as that sort of thing. Whereas with Assange it's more unprecedented and there isn't a dark and scary model to lump him into.