Washington Post Media Columnist Supports Pardon for ‘Brave’ Edward Snowden

“Snowden did an important — and brave — service for the American public,” Margaret Sullivan writes days after paper came out against a pardon for the whistleblower

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The Washington Post shocked journalists when its editorial board came out against a pardon for exiled NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, but at least the paper’s media columnist Margaret Sullivan is siding with the former National Security Agency contractor.

Sullivan wrote that President Obama’s administration “has an unfortunate record of prosecuting whistleblowers,” and he can fix that legacy by pardoning Snowden.

“Obama absolutely should do so,” she wrote. “Snowden did an important — and brave — service for the American public and, in fact, the world, when he made it possible for news organizations to reveal widespread government surveillance of citizens.”

The Post won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on Snowden’s revelations about secret government surveillance, and it called for the prosecution of its own source in an editorial over the weekend.

“One of the beneficiaries was The Washington Post, which won the Pulitzer Prize for public service for stories made possible by Snowden’s leak of thousands of documents,” Sullivan added in her column that disagrees with the editorial board.

“Whether Mr. Snowden deserves a presidential pardon, as human rights organizations are demanding in a new national campaign timed to coincide with the film, is a complicated question, however, to which President Obama’s answer should continue to be ‘no,’” the Post’s editorial board wrote.

Sullivan concludes: “Snowden made it possible for journalists to provide a historic public service to his country. And his country ought to show him some appreciation, not threaten him with imprisonment or keep him in exile.”

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