Washington Post Is First Paper to Call for Prosecution of Its Own Source
Greenwald makes an important point and then sabotages it with over-the-top emotional appeals.<p>He&#x27;s right that the Editorial Page editors should acknowledge the Post&#x27;s own role in publicizing NSA foreign ops. He&#x27;s probably right that Marty Baron would disagree with the Editorial. It is hypocritical for the Post to campaign against clemency for Snowden without acknowledging their (prominent) role in the leaks.<p>But it&#x27;s not enough for Greenwald to make an interesting point. Anything interesting Greenwald has to say must be deployed in the service of his own campaign against the Post and the New York Times, against the journalistic establishment, and, ultimately, the US Government. So, interleaved among all the grafs establishing the Post&#x27;s hypocrisy we have a parallel story of cowardice and betrayal, of the Post somehow setting new precedents in how papers handle sources. <i>quelle horreur</i>.<p>The Post can be hypocritical and still, potentially, correct in opining about clemency for Snowden.<p>The Post can be cowardly and still correct.<p>Criminals have been sources for newspapers for as long as there&#x27;s been newspapers. A reporter takes on some obligations --- created by norms and barely if at all recognized by law --- when engaging a reluctant or vulnerable source. But none of those obligations include full-throated support for the 
sources interests moving forward. How would that even make sense?<p>Greenwald makes this critique even easier to write when he drags Frad Kaplan into his litany of cowardice. Kaplan wasn&#x27;t one of the Post&#x27;s Snowden-sourced journalists, and the piece that has Greenwald outraged is criticism of Oliver Stone&#x27;s Snowden movie --- criticism that we can quibble with, but that is overall well-founded and seemingly absent from the discussion about the movie. Seemingly for the sole offense of having an opinion that differs from Greenwald&#x27;s (and for being a member of the evil journalistic establishment), Kaplan too must join the league of cowardice.<p>What&#x27;s most maddening to me is the narrative (because everything about Snowden needs to be a narrative, with an arc and a resolution that we all collectively evaluate to derive the Metacritic score for this part of American history) that Snowden has through bravery somehow transcended accountability, and that entities like the Post through cowardice have surrendered any future claim to reason or judgement.<p>We can argue all day about Snowden&#x27;s bravery (the other side of the Snowden debate has another side of the bravery argument, too, and just as unproductive). But stipulate that he was unimpeachably courageous. So what? Lots of brave people do counterproductive things. Abortion clinic bombers are brave. Bank robbers are brave. The dude who phished all those celebrity iCloud accounts and published the photos --- I don&#x27;t know if he knew how &quot;brave&quot; that was, but that took some stones. Firefighters are brave and so were the medics on the beaches of Normandy. In evaluating someone&#x27;s actions, we need more data than &quot;courage&quot; <i>or even best intentions</i> to come to a conclusion.<p>There are no doubt many good arguments for total clemency for Snowden. I probably don&#x27;t agree with them (cards on the table: in my own fictional narrative of the Snowden story, he&#x27;s convicted of something meaningful and has his sentence immediately suspended). But none of those arguments should have much to do with &quot;bravery&quot;.