Should Greenwald be Awarded Pulitzer?

[Turk.]

By Jennie Matthew 11:36 AM, Apr 13, 2014

In January, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper suggested that journalists reporting on the leaks had acted as Snowden's "accomplices."

Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, US journalists who interviewed Snowden in Hong Kong, returned home to the United States on Friday for the first time after breaking the story.

They told reporters after receving a George Polk Award for their coverage with The Guardian's Ewen MacAskill and the Post's Barton Gellman that they fear arrest and being subpoened.

"I can't imagine a more appropriate choice for a Pulitzer Prize," New York University media studies professor Mark Miller told AFP.

"Glenn Greenwald has done what American journalists are supposed to do, which is serve the public interest by shedding a bright light on egregious abuse of power by the government."

The question on journalists' lips is whether America's most prestigious journalism prize, the Pulitzers, will honor them when the annual awards are announced Monday
Source

[+theblazingangel MVC]

"Glenn Greenwald has done what American journalists are supposed to do, which is serve the public interest by shedding a bright light on egregious abuse of power by the government."

Precisely! So hell yes.

[Anibal P]

no, he hasn't done anything of real value, Snowden's real backers dids the work, that moron couldn't hack his way into Target 

[+theblazingangel MVC]

no, he hasn't done anything of real value, Snowden's real backers dids the work, that moron couldn't hack his way into Target 

 

What? I don't want to start / participate in arguments, but I felt compelled to address what you've said here, partly because so much of it is irrelevant, and also because I can't even follow your reasoning for saying no.

 

So you seem to think that taking the documents that Snowden took required great hacking skill, skill which you think he doesn't possess, and thus it required Russian help, or rather perhaps it wasn't even Snowden but the Russians themselves who did it? If so I don't mean to offend, but on this topic the words ignorant, misinformed, deluded and naive come to mind, again, I'm not meaning to offend but I feel that very few if any people who are properly informed on this would agree with you on much or any of this. Whatever you think about how the documents were leaked though, it is completely irrelevant with regard to assigning a value to the revelations and proof that has been given to the public, or more specifically for this thread, the value of Greenwald's role in their delivery.

 

You appear to be suggesting that Greenwald should not get the award because somehow you think that "Snowden's 'real backers' did the work" and thus Greenwald did nothing of real value; I'm very confused as to what you're thinking here. There are two sides to this, the leaking of the documents to journalists, and the reporting to the public. How they were leaked to journalists like Greenwald, whether Russians were involved, as I've already said, is entirely irrelevant here. What is relevant is the work of reporting information to the public about what is in the leaked documents. The reporting takes a lot of effort to go through all of the documents and assess what to publish. Nobody could credibly argue that this work is the Russian's doing, it is clearly being done by journalists like Greenwald.

 

Or perhaps I misunderstood, perhaps by not having done something of value you instead were meaning that you place no value on this information being made public, that you don't think that it is in the public's best interest for it to have been revealed. If so then we have a stark difference of opinion.

 

The only legitimate question here is whether or not his work as a journalist meets the criteria for the award, and I think that it does. Try to put aside any bias you may feel about whether you consider it to be in the public's best interest for this stuff to be revealed, consider that this is a huge story - just look at what has resulted from it, the number of articles, the news coverage, the political responses, etc, etc; consider the importance that so many people around the world place on privacy and freedom and how much value they must place on proof of what it is that governments and their intelligence services are doing; consider that journalists have a responsibility to the public to keep them informed so the government can be held to account; consider the huge pressure and threat from the government in a case like this. Consider how important Greenwald's work has been in all of this and the pressure he has been under (and still is under) in doing it. Need I go on.

[cooky560 Veteran]

Without question anything in support of Snowden in particular public awareness of the misdeeds being committed by their leaders in their name deserves the highest honors possible. Give him the award for actually doing what journalists of the free press are supposed to do.

[Melfster]

I don't think he deserves it because anybody going after the corrupt Putin or Chinese Governments deserve it more.  Because aftrer all you don't see very much opposition to those governments.

[Turk.]

They should have won it, They did, traitor bass and peach  :)
Journalists Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald helped The Guardian win a Pulitzer Prize for public service along with The Washington Post Monday, for their stories based on NSA documents provided by Edward Snowden.
Source

[theyarecomingforyou]

The world needs more journalists like Greenwald.