RE: GG in correcting a fact you make my point. Obsession with GG is a distraction.
From the beginning of the NSA revelations I have consistently said that the emotion that is directed at Glenn Greenwald is a distraction.
He is basically acting in the same function the NYT did when they published the Pentagon Papers. If the Guardian didn't publish his material there would be a hundred other papers that would have.
It is not against the law to publish secret material and it quickly becomes a first amendment case. The only time I know where the US government tried to get an injunction before the fact was the Pentagon Papers and the Supreme Court was unanimous in that case.
As long as GG wasn't involved in actions to take the material out of a classified facility or status then he is acting like hundreds of others have.
Yesterday in a thread I linked to this NPR article that details the steps Snowden undertook with two reporters to get his material out. It shows how professional reporters vet their sources:
http://www.npr.org/2013/09/11/221359323/reporter-had-to-decide-if-snowden-leaks-were-the-real-thing
Since the beginning of June, Barton Gellman has been reporting on classified intelligence documents given to him by Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor. As a result of the Snowden leaks, Gellman and reporter Laura Poitras broke the story of the PRISM program, which mines data from nine U.S. Internet companies, including Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and Facebook.
Gellman, who has been writing for The Washington Post, also found that the NSA has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress expanded the agency's powers in 2008. He revealed that the U.S. has conducted cyber-operations against computer networks in foreign countries — including Iran, Russia, China and North Korea — and reported on the "black budget" used to fund secret programs in America's 16 spy agencies.
Somebody has gone off site and established a blog to denounce my "facts" because
NPR was referring to the famous June 5 story entitled, "NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily", authored by Mr. Greenwald.
In his heated DU exchanged, grantcart said that Snowden was in contact with others before he was in contact with Greenwald. But this is not the same as saying who broke a story.
Brandon Gellman and Laura Poitras published their first NSA-related story on June 7th, two days after Greenwald broke the story about the controversial dragnet metadata program.
So it turns out that GG did break some of the story and other reporters who had been in a lengthy period of cooperation with Snowden broke the PRISM story 2 days after GG made a more general revelation, I will concede the point without bothering to even link to Guardian because you are making my point for me:
1) GG is simply not that important in the story of the leaks. If he didn't publish the details others would, and in fact did. We know why Snowden picked Poitras (her documentaries) and Gellman (Poitras needed an expert). Why did he pick GG? I don't know and don't care, He just isn't that important an actor.
2) By going off site and starting a completely new blog to contest that GG was earlier than Poitras by 2 days you are making my other point: The obsession with GG is basically an emotional one. Some elevate him without giving consideration to his other political agendas and others are consumed with hatred because they think he was indispensable. He was neither villain or hero. If he didn't write the articles, others would and did have direct contact with Snowden. Whatever motives GG has beyond Snowden are not that relevant because he isn't that significant a political commentator.
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Investigative Reporters, and Whistle Blowers.
They are the Watch Dogs of our Democracy.
