Two false claims about NSA leaker Edward Snowden escaped fact-checking till Glenn Greenwald uncovered them
The New York Instances has stealth-edited a narrative that used the current Pentagon leaks to smear former NSA contractor Edward Snowden as an irresponsible whistleblower, based mostly on two falsehoods. The textual content was quietly modified on Friday, after Glenn Greenwald – one of many journalists Snowden truly entrusted together with his categorized paperwork – posted a sequence of tweets exposing its falsehoods.
In his article, titled “As soon as stunning, US spying on its allies attracts a worldwide shrug,” the Instances’ diplomatic correspondent Michael Crowley claimed Snowden “handed [classified documents] off to the web site Wikileaks for publication in what he referred to as a public service to reveal authorities overreach.” Later within the article, he wrote that the revelation the NSA was spying on former German chancellor Angela Merkel got here from the Snowden paperwork.
Neither assertion is true, as Greenwald pointed out, marveling that each falsehoods had endured a number of layers of editorial vetting, presumably some fact-checking, and several other hours of publication.
Not less than two editors concerned with the reporting and publication of the unique Snowden leaks truly responded to Crowley to tell him that the whistleblower gave his proof to journalists on the Washington Publish and the Guardian, which vetted them in line with editorial process.
Greenwald additionally identified that the story concerning the NSA eavesdropping on Merkel didn’t come from the Snowden paperwork, although the 2014 Danish intelligence investigation that finally uncovered it was impressed by the knowledge these paperwork had revealed.
Shortly after Greenwald uncovered the sloppy reporting by Crowley and the Instances, the article was altered to learn that Snowden had “offered [classified documents] to journalists in what he referred to as a public service to reveal authorities overreach.”
The outlet additionally clarified that the Merkel revelation occurred “two years after Mr. Snowden’s leaks.” There was no word revealing that the unique had been unsuitable or {that a} correction had been printed.
When Greenwald identified the stealth-edit in a tweet on Friday, the Instances edited the story once more, including a word on the finish of the article that acknowledged “an earlier model of this text misstated the recipient of intelligence paperwork offered by the previous NSA contractor Edward Snowden. He gave them to journalists, to not the web site WikiLeaks.” The paper did not touch upon the opposite stealth-edit, concerning Merkel.
