The Guardian And Washington Post Win Pulitzers For Snowden Coverage

from the good-for-them dept

While various arbitrary prizes and awards may not mean much in the grand scheme of things, it’s still quite heartening to see that the Guardian and the Washington Post were awarded a Pulitzer for public service for their reporting on the NSA via the Ed Snowden documents.

For a distinguished example of meritorious public service by a newspaper or news site through the use of its journalistic resources, including the use of stories, editorials, cartoons, photographs, graphics, videos, databases, multimedia or interactive presentations or other visual material, a gold medal.

Awarded to The Washington Post for its revelation of widespread secret surveillance by the National Security Agency, marked by authoritative and insightful reports that helped the public understand how the disclosures fit into the larger framework of national security.

and

Awarded to The Guardian US for its revelation of widespread secret surveillance by the National Security Agency, helping through aggressive reporting to spark a debate about the relationship between the government and the public over issues of security and privacy.

Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Bart Gellman and Ewan McCaskill (among others at both publications) should be congratulated for the work they put into the original stories and for all of the followup in the face of ridiculous levels of criticism from those who were embarrassed by Snowden’s whistleblowing. Separately, with the Pulitzers recognizing that such reporting was a public service, can we finally stop people from claiming that Snowden was a “traitor” and admit that what he did was clearly whistleblowing in the furtherance of the public interest?

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Companies: the guardian, washington post

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Comments on “The Guardian And Washington Post Win Pulitzers For Snowden Coverage”

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11 Comments
FM Hilton (profile) says:

Well done!

Somehow I rather doubt that the NSA would agree with the awards to all concerned.

They are completely fitting and appropriate-but it won’t stop the NSA and their beholden ones from continuing to squawk and yell “traitor” every time they hear Snowden’s name.

Congrats to all of them. They earned it the hard way, by doing real journalism.

We owe them a lot of gratitude for their courage in doing it, considering that our government would have liked to have been able to do what the British did, by telling the editors “Well, you’ve had your fun, now it’s time to stop.”

Thank goodness the 1st Amendment is still a cherished right.

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