Washington Post Slammed for Saying Edward Snowden Should Not Be Pardoned

Paper won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting using NSA leaker as a source

Edward Snowden
Citizenfour

The Washington Post shocked journalists over the weekend when its editorial board came out against a pardon for exiled NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The paper won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on Snowden’s revelations about secret goverment surveillance, and it is now calling for the prosecution of its own source.

“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.

The paper’s editorial also board wrote, “Ideally, Mr. Snowden would come home and hash out all of this before a jury of his peers.”

The Washington Post was among the publications that published information that Snowden supplied regarding the United States’ illegal use of wiretapping to spy on U.S. citizens. The Guardian and the Intercept were among the other publications that published the sensitive information.

Former Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald was involved in the Snowden leak and fired back at the Post, noting that the New York Times, the Guardian and the Intercept have called for Snowden to be allowed to return to the country.

“But not the Washington Post,” Greenwald wrote. “In doing so, the Washington Post has achieved an ignominious feat in U.S. media history: the first-ever paper to explicitly editorialize for the criminal prosecution of its own source — one on whose back the paper won and eagerly accepted a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.”

Twitter users agree with Greenwald.

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