Less than a week after whistleblower Edward Snowden was a US Main Stream Media darling as The Guardian and The Washington Post secured the Pulitzer Prize, the media proves itself rapidly willing to revert to rabidly trashing the whistleblower whose revelations made their Pulitzer Prize for Public Service possible.
WaPo - in addition to running a story about Putin with Snowden's picture, implying completely incorrectly and without evidence that the two are in cahoots - gives commentator Steven Stromberg a platform to resurrect the long-disproven "Russian spy" narrative while attempting to tarnish Snowden with a tired list of negative personality traits like "contemptible" and lacking "a shred of dignity."
If only commentators were as skeptical of the U.S. government officials who lied to the US about surveillance, torture and the "evidence" for wars - lies the media eagerly reprinted. No matter how often named and "anonymous" government officials mislead the public, the media is always willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. But, the whistleblower Edward Snowden, someone who has told only the truth in the past 10 months, receives no benefit of the doubt and instead gets the scrutiny that should be aimed at our elected officials.
What did Snowden do to unleash these latest personal attacks? After being damned by critics for not questioning the Russian government more, Snowden asked Russian President Putin a question - the same question that Senator Ron Wyden asked Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who lied.
Instead of reading an uninformed commentator, hear it from Snowden himself, who eloquently explained in The Guardian, which deserves credit for running the piece:
But to me, the rare opportunity to lift a taboo on discussion of state surveillance before an audience that primarily views state media outweighed that risk. Moreover, I hoped that Putin's answer – whatever it was – would provide opportunities for serious journalists and civil society to push the discussion further.
. . .
I blew the whistle on the NSA's surveillance practices not because I believed that the United States was uniquely at fault, but because I believe that mass surveillance of innocents – the construction of enormous, state-run surveillance time machines that can turn back the clock on the most intimate details of our lives – is a threat to all people, everywhere, no matter who runs them.
Last year, I risked family, life, and freedom to help initiate a global debate that even Obama himself conceded "will make our nation stronger". I am no more willing to trade my principles for privilege today than I was then.
I understand the concerns of critics, but there is a more obvious explanation for my question than a secret desire to defend the kind of policies I sacrificed a comfortable life to challenge: if we are to test the truth of officials' claims, we must first give them an opportunity to make those claims.
The fact that Snowden even had to explain himself for asking a question that mirrored the one Senators and journalists appropriately posed to the U.S. officials demonstrates just how quick the media is to condemn the whistleblower even when, as Snowden accurately points out:
In fact, Putin's response was remarkably similar to Barack Obama's initial, sweeping denials of the scope of the NSA's domestic surveillance programs, before that position was later shown to be both untrue and indefensible.
The media should be focused on Putin's answer - not the question and certainly not who asked it.
But, given the speed with which the media picks up on rumors about a whistleblower, let's get one thing straight: Snowden is in Russia because the U.S. government stranded him there by revoking his passport while he was en route to Latin America. Snowden has been forced to seek asylum because the U.S. is seeking to persecute him giving the press the ability to report on the NSA's ineffective and invasive mass surveillance operations. II've explained in detail why he would not get a fair trial in the U.S. Criticism about Snowden's location should be aimed at at the responsible party: the US government, which created an atomosphere where a whistleblower could not safely reveal government waste, fraud, abuse and illegality without leaving the country. The facts about Snowden haven't changed since he first went public in June.
Meanwhile, with an informed press and public thanks to Snowden, the U.S. government's answers about surveillance are ever-changing. Clapper has admitted to "being the least untruthful" he could be, Obama has called for a end to the bulk metadata collection, but hasn't ended it yet, and a federal judge has held that the program that government officials insisted was "legal" is in fact "likely unconstitutional." Such commitment on Snowden's part should earn him credibility, or at least as much as the U.S. officials, who, in contrast to Snowden, have proven themselves willing to mislead the public.
