How the Guardian scooped America with the Snowden leaker story
Janine Gibson, editor in chief of The Guardian U.S., in a wide-ranging interview with US magazine Adweek, has discussed the Guardian's 's great exclusive on the ongoing story of whistleblower Edward Snowden.
GREENWALD: Starting it all.
She talked of how the paper's US correspondent Glenn Greenwald was a leader in exposing the Snowden story, after interviewing with him in Hong Kong, along with Even MacAskill and documentary maker Laura Poitras.
Gibson was asked why she thought The Guardian was the news organisation to blow this story open in such a big way?
"I genuinely think that there is a series of unique things that came together. Glenn [Greenwald] is the magnet in the sense that he cares passionately about this subject and has a sort of forensic mind.
"So he's the perfect person for someone with Edward Snowden's beliefs and expertise to want to talk to. And there's an attitudinal thing.
"The Guardian has now established itself as somewhere that deals with big leaks of complex information in a responsible, thorough, well-thought-through, incredibly disciplined and public-interest-led way."
Adweek asked: Is the publication of these stories a turning point?
"I think these stories would be a turning point for any news organization in the world, to be honest. This has been a huge story and continues to be. And clearly it's attracting an enormous audience both in the U.S. and globally.
"What we're seeing is the sort of underlying growth aside from the spikes around when we publish these stories, which is really pleasing.
"I'm certainly hearing from readers who are writing to us and emailing and taking the time to say how much they appreciate the reporting that we're doing on this story, but also, really gratifyingly, how they're finding things all around the site that really speak to them.
"So that's great. As an inducement to sample for new readers, it's a good one because it's actually really core to who we are in lots of ways. So it's not misleading.
Have you been surprised by the reaction Glenn Greenwald has received or the press attention/stories that have been written about him?
"It has surprised me that journalists would be keen to describe someone doing I think quite brave and important work as not journalistic. I'm surprised by that. I was really taken aback by it.
" We come from the U.K. newspaper background, where news organisations jab at each other all the time and it's perfectly territorial and in some cases vicious. But in general when it's the establishment vs. the media, you stand by the media.
Glenn Greenwald is now to publish a book about Edward Snowden's exposure of mass public surveillance by the US government.
The book, which is due out in March, will contain new revelations about the NSA surveillance programs, according to publisher Metropolitan Books.