The NSA Debate is as Much About Journalism as Surveillance

By: Glenn Greenwald | The Guardian

In late June, the economist Dean Baker astutely observed that our NSA reporting was "doing as much to expose corrupt journalism as to expose government spying." Indeed, from the earliest stages of this reporting, back in Hong Kong, we expected (and hoped) that the reporting we were about to do would expose conflicts in how journalism is understood and practiced as much as it would shine light on the NSA's specific surveillance programs.