^Dunno. I thought Gellman did an admirable job of sticking to the truth as he knows it. And I'd also credit the interviewer for simply handing him a concise group of questions at one point that neatly summarized most of the nonsensical chatter that's been floating around in order to give him the opportunity to refute them
from the perspective of an actual insider in the Snowden story.
I also admired Gellman as much for what he
refused to say - and the NPR interviewer for graciously accepting that refusal and not pushing it like many of the mainstream news channel interviewers would have.
None of that sounds like state sponsored propaganda to me.
If it were, the interviewer would have attempted to make Gellman look like a ring-tailed baboon with rapid-fire leading questions and inference tossing like the neo-con talk show hosts so love to do.
At the end of this interview I think Snowden emerges in a much better light than many would have given him credit for. And the same goes for Gellman who also got to show how (contrary to the administration and intelligence community's allegations and unsupported assertions) the Washington Post displayed a
huge degree of discretion and restraint in what they
did publish when presenting the Snowden story to the American public.
As Gellman pointed out, Snowden (or the three news sources he shared his data with) could have
easily done a raw data dump to Wikileaks or a mirroring network at any time. And there would have been very little that 'the powers that be' could have done to prevent it.
The fact that the Washington Post
did speak and consult with the government to minimize release of certain
technical and
operational details - details which would have done little to advance the story - shows good judgment IMHO. Especially since the big picture that has emerged is damning enough - and more than sufficient to establish just how extensive and serious a problem we have right now.
Which supports the Washington Post's argument that they published with no intention other than to inform the general public of what was going on - and set a debate in motion.
Which it did.
All in all, I think it was handled rather well on NPR and the WP's part.
Recent Posts
)
