The Guardian and Washington Post have both won a shared Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of the Edward Snowden leak that ultimately led to the world discovering the breadth of the NSA’s surveillance programs. Their initial coverage, which we covered, we have followed and covered numerous NSA-related revelations that have come out of both the Washington Post and The Guardian, even though, I would have liked to see Der Spiegel included in the recognition of publications that have served the public beneficially by researching and publicly denouncing the NSA’s actions.
For their part, there is no denying that the Washington Post and The Guardian have done a great public service for the world in remaining steadfast in their journalistic principals, even when the GCHQ forced The Guardian to destroy their laptops and computers.
However, one must not forget that these newspapers are still businesses, and even though Jeff Bezos recently purchased the Washington Post to protect it and keep it safe, it doesn’t change the fact that they are still businesses. This means that many of the revelations that have been published about the NSA have slowly trickled out and resulted in many millions of hits for each publication, worth millions of dollars in advertising revenue. Sure, there’s a value in slowly letting out the information in order for certain important things not to be missed, but there’s also some criticism that they are milking the Snowden leak for their maximum benefit as Snowden is not responsible for how they distribute the documents.
In the end, the world is a better place with the Snowden leaks, at least in our eyes, and they have done the world a huge service by helping Snowden show the world the grave oversteppings of the NSA under the guise of national security and the protection of the United States of America’s interests. Sure, it makes the NSA’s job harder, but a lot of the things they’ve been doing are highly questionable, even with the ambiguity of the Patriot Act.
