To myself, and I imagine many others with the same views of self sacrifice and patriotic comittment, there was no need for the reporters to make Snowden out to be a hero.<p>Simply the act of putting oneself in such a dangerous situation, risking ones entire life and livelihood and ability to be with the ones they love to try and make their nation a better place, is one key part of what it means to be heroic (As long as the actions themselves do not cross certain lines.)  And as per my initial paragraph, this is speaking as someone who sees this disclosure as very fair, those lines were not crossed, he truly is a hero on his own merit to a level of which we have had very few since the founding of this country.