Filmmaker takes center stage in surveillance story
By Lynn Elber
Associated Press
Posted: 06/14/2013 12:59:44 PM PDT
... For peers and backers of Poitras, the 2012 recipient of a $500,000 "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation, it's unsurprising that she has seized a story worth telling. However, her crucial involvement with a confidential source and two newspapers on the same big exclusive is extraordinary.
"She's incredibly driven and determined and she doesn't let obstacles get in the way," said Simon Kilmurry, executive producer of PBS' documentary series "POV," a home to Poitras' work. "She really works at the intersection of journalist and artist and storyteller."
Poitras, 49, who has said she was Edward Snowden's first media contact on the story she helped break, shared bylines on The Washington Post and The Guardian of London articles revealing vast and secret phone and Internet surveillance. She was behind the camera for a gripping video interview, posted online, in which the former spy agency contractor responsible for the leaks calmly defended his actions ...
Marvin Kalb, professor emeritus of press and public policy at Harvard University, said he could think of no precedent for a situation where a documentarian drove a story in this manner. His gut feeling is that "she's blown it" and should have kept this information for herself and her documentary, "and in one glorious moment have all of it," said Kalb, a longtime reporter for CBS and NBC News ...
http://www.sbsun.com/business/ci_23462252/filmmaker-takes-center-stage-surveillance-story
