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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Filed Under: barton gellman, ed snowden, ewan mccaskill, glenn greenwald, laura poitras, pulitzer prizes
Companies: the guardian, washington post


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  • identicon
    FM Hilton, 14 Apr 2014 @ 1:09pm

    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.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    That Anonymous Coward (profile), 14 Apr 2014 @ 1:14pm

    "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?"

    Perhaps you are unfamiliar with how the Government talking heads operate.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Anonymous Coward, 14 Apr 2014 @ 1:14pm

    What do they have to say about this?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Anonymous Coward, 14 Apr 2014 @ 1:17pm

    What do they have to say about this? cont.

    Meaning

    President Obama
    Hayden
    Clapper
    Feinstein
    Rodgers
    and the rest of the 'Put Snowden in Jail and arrest all the journalists' crowd.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 14 Apr 2014 @ 1:22pm

    Well, at least one fuckface is not happy with this decision:

    https://twitter.com/RepPeteKing/status/455788369034104833

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    DCL, 14 Apr 2014 @ 1:33pm

    They only won because

    The NSA "arranged" the win so they could get the address to "send them a gift basket".

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Alt0, 14 Apr 2014 @ 1:34pm

    Yay! One for the good guys.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 14 Apr 2014 @ 2:50pm

    it was to us and definitely was to the various EU countries and their heads, especially Merkel, but discounting Cameron, who is up to his neck in doing whatever he can for the USA, even when it's against his own people!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 14 Apr 2014 @ 3:06pm

    Note well, every broadcast news organization on the planet

    This is what journalism looks like.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Ninja (profile), 15 Apr 2014 @ 3:45am

    Epic win, punch in US Govt collective stomachs. It's becoming increasingly harder to maintain the traitor thing indeed.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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