I actually think Snowden is much more problematic as a case than Assange is.
Snowden released some information which was within the realm of reasonable activities for the organisations he worked with, an he was in fact American, so was not quite loyal.
Meanwhile, everything Assange did was appropriate. He has no duties to the US, not being a US citizen or permanent resident, and political bias is very common with journalists. Maybe there is one or two unbiased journalist in all of America, probably people with very extreme pro-truth and consequences-can't-be-allowed-to-matter mindsets, but there's not going to be many of them.