{"id":42316,"date":"2014-05-05T12:00:01","date_gmt":"2014-05-05T11:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=42316"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:35:03","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:35:03","slug":"another-pulitzer-for-reporting-classified-info","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/05\/another-pulitzer-for-reporting-classified-info\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Pulitzer for Reporting Classified Info"},"content":{"rendered":"

The prize\u2019s board has \u201crewarded\u201d coverage of leaked material before.<\/em><\/p>\n

16 Apr 2014 – <\/em>The Pulitzer committee\u2019s decision to give its public service award this year to the Washington Post<\/em> and the Guardian<\/em> for their stories on government surveillance has elicited a few predictable reactions from those who believe that the source of the National Security Agency material\u2014former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden\u2014is not a whistleblower, but a criminal.<\/p>\n

US Rep. Peter King of New York told the Associated Press that the award was \u201crewarding illegal conduct\u201d and tweeted<\/a>, \u201cawarding the Pulitzer to Snowden enablers is a disgrace.\u201d Former Bush administration lawyer John Yoo told Politico<\/a> that the prize shouldn\u2019t be \u201ca vindication for Snowden\u2019s crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last month, Politico wrote<\/a> that giving the award to the NSA reports \u201cwould inevitably be perceived as a political act, with the Pulitzer committee invoking its prestige on behalf of one side in a bitter national argument.\u201d Politico, like other outlets, compared the situation to the New York Times<\/em>\u2019 1972 win for its stories on the Pentagon Papers, another whistleblower case with a large-scale leak of secret documents.<\/p>\n

But that comparison overshadows a number of honors in the intervening time that have gone to coverage based on classified material, notably that of CIA black sites and warrantless wiretapping. Those disclosures were also controversial and fundamentally changed our understanding of US counterterrorism efforts.<\/p>\n

In 2006, the Washington Post<\/em>\u2019s Dana Priest won a Pulitzer for reporting<\/a> on the CIA\u2019s detention and interrogation of terror suspects. At the time, \u201cthe executive branch, members of congress and many conservative TV pundits were searingly critical of my reporting and of The Post<\/em> for publishing it,\u201d said Priest in an email to CJR. \u201cThe email and message machine reaction was overwhelmingly negative.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eight years after Priest\u2019s stories, senators are engaged in a pitched public battle with the CIA over the declassification of a Senate intelligence committee report on the agency\u2019s activities during those years.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is stunning to me that now Congress [is] pushing the CIA to declassify information they used to say would damage national security if released,\u201d said Priest. Top former intelligence officials have even weighed in<\/a> in favor of declassification. (Ironically, US Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who heads the intelligence committee and is leading the charge to release the report, has asked the Justice Department to investigate<\/a> who leaked the report\u2019s key findings to McClatchy last week. \u201cIf someone distributed any part of this classified report, they broke the law and should be prosecuted,\u201d Feinstein said.)<\/p>\n

James Risen and Eric Lichtblau were also honored in 2006 for their revelation<\/a> of the Bush administration\u2019s warrantless wiretapping program. The reporters likewise faced critics who called their expos\u00e9 treasonous (while others condemned them for holding the story<\/a> for a year after administration officials urged them not to publish). Former Vice President Dick Cheney said in 2009<\/a> that \u201cit always aggravated me\u201d that the Times<\/em> won that Pulitzer.<\/p>\n

The debate over classified disclosures isn\u2019t academic for Risen: He may yet have to testify in the case of Jeffrey Sterling, a CIA agent accused of leaking him information about US efforts to sabotage Iranian nuclear programs. Risen appealed to the Supreme Court in January. \u201cIt is too dangerous to allow the government to conduct national security policy completely in the dark,\u201d he told<\/a> the Times<\/em> public editor at the time of the appeal.<\/p>\n

Last year, a Pulitzer finalist was the Washington Post<\/em>\u2019s coverage of the drone war<\/a>\u2014another aspect of US national security policy that we know about only because people have spoken about what is officially secret.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn balance, so much of what the government has classified in the name of safeguarding national security has been, in fact, improperly kept secret to avoid embarrassment, to shield activities that would not have been tolerated by the public, and\/or to avoid uncomfortable public debate,\u201d said Priest.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s more to come from Snowden\u2019s documents, and the full fallout from them is still unclear. But given that President Obama himself (though still condemning Snowden\u2019s actions) has said<\/a> that a debate around surveillance issues \u201cwill make us stronger,\u201d it doesn\u2019t seem surprising that the Pulitzer board has again chosen to celebrate journalism that exposed what the government does under cover of classification.<\/p>\n

__________________________<\/p>\n

Cora Currier<\/em> is a freelance journalist focusing on national security. Previously, she was a reporting fellow at <\/em>ProPublica and on the editorial staff of <\/em>The New Yorker.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 cjr.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

16 Apr 2014 – The Pulitzer committee\u2019s decision to give its public service award this year to the Washington Post and the Guardian for their stories on government surveillance has elicited a few predictable reactions from those who believe that the source of the NSA material\u2014Edward Snowden\u2014is not a whistleblower, but a criminal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-whistleblowing-surveillance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}