dna edit: An anti-statist award

This year’s Pulitzer prize for public service, the highest accolade in US journalism, awarded to the Guardian and the Washington Post for their exposes on the National Security Agency (NSA)’s surveillance activities, is more than an acknowledgement of journalistic excellence. It is an inherently political statement about former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s leaks regarding the agency’s activities. His detractors — and there are many both in the US establishment and the US public at large — have contested the point, portraying the prize as a neutral statement solely concerned with the manner in which the Post and the Guardian have dealt with the issue, but that is sophistry. The unique nature of the issue and the manner in which it came to light make it impossible to differentiate between the nature and worth of the coverage and of Snowden’s activities. And in that context, the Pulitzer is a much-needed rebuke to the perception that Snowden is a traitor or a feckless self-aggrandiser.

At its core, journalism means speaking truth to power and to the people. In doing so, the media is meant to check the state’s power and ensure that it is accountable to the people. Snowden’s leaks enabled the newspapers to do exactly that. US President Barack Obama might have complained that Snowden’s leaks “could impact our operations in ways that we might not fully understand for years to come”, but he also admitted that the public debate ignited by the exposes would make the US stronger. It has already begun to do so. The executive, legislature and judiciary have all subjected the NSA’s activities to closer scrutiny in the scandal’s aftermath. Difficult questions have been asked —  not just of the agency and the government, but of private corporations like Google and Yahoo that handle citizens’ private data. The process of limiting the scope of NSA surveillance is consequently underway, and the corporations have begun to take steps to ensure their data is safer. These are all unalloyed goods.

That Snowden was regardless pilloried as he was is proof of the manner in which the public debate in the US has become skewed when it comes to issues of rights and national security. As much as former President George W Bush’s government abrogated citizens’ rights via the Patriot Act and subsequent measures, a populace understandably shaken by 9/11 surrendered them for the promise of greater security.

Over subsequent years that saw a war prosecuted on false grounds, increasing levels of surveillance, use of torture on terrorism suspects and the rise of drone warfare, that compromise seems to have become a habit. Consequently, various polls place the percentage of Americans — the people most directly benefitted by the expose — who think Snowden did the right thing at less than half.

The Pulitzer swims against this current, and that is what makes it particularly important this year. As Marty Boren, editor of the Washington Post said after the announcement, without Snowden, “there would have been no public debate about the proper balance between privacy and national security.” The prize is an implicit recognition of this. And it is in keeping with its own tradition of taking on the State, whether in 1972 when the New York Times won for the Pentagon Papers or the following year when the Washington Post broke the Watergate story.