Edward Snowden’s NSA Leaks Lead to Pulitzer Prize; Pension Crisis Also Noticed

The Pulitzer Prize has rendered
its vote on what it thinks of Edward Snowden’s revelation of the
National Security Agency’s (NSA) domestic surveillance techniques
today by giving a gold medal in public
service to The Guardian US and The Washington
Post for breaking the stories. The Pulitzer committee credits
the Post for helping “the public understand how the
disclosures fit into the larger framework of national security,”
while The Guardian is recognized for “helping through
aggressive reporting to spark a debate about the relationship
between the government and the public over issues of security and
privacy.”

Snowden has already put out a
statement:

“Today’s decision is a vindication for everyone who believes
that the public has a role in government. We owe it to the efforts
of the brave reporters and their colleagues who kept working in the
face of extraordinary intimidation, including the forced
destruction of journalistic materials, the inappropriate use of
terrorism laws, and so many other means of pressure to get them to
stop what the world now recognizes was work of vital public
importance.”

Rosie Gray of
BuzzFeed tracked down NSA hard-core surveillance-defender and
Snowden-hater Rep. Pete King (R-IRA).
He told her “Anybody who got a Pulitzer in the past should give it
back. The Pulitzer Prize doesn’t mean anything now.”

The NSA responded by hacking the Twitter feed of US Airways and
distracting the world by putting up a picture of a naked woman with
a model plane in her nethers. I am kidding about the hacking, but
the
tweet actually happened and quickly became all everybody was
talking about online. It’s still not as horrifying as last year,
when the Boston Marathon bombing happened right as the winners were
being announced. (The Boston Globe got a Pulitzer for
breaking news for their coverage.)

Getting much less attention, partly because of the Snowden
debate but also because the subject just gets less attention,
The Oregonian’s editorial board won a Pulitzer Prize in
the category of editorial writing for its coverage of the state’s
pension crisis. The Pulitzer Prize committee praised “its lucid
editorials that explain the urgent but complex issue of rising
pension costs, notably engaging readers and driving home the link
between necessary solutions and their impact on everyday lives.”
The Oregonian ’s package of editorials can be read

here.

The full list of Pulitzer winners can be found here.

There’s also some interesting topics tackled by the runners-up.
The NSA coverage beat out a report by Newsday of concealed
police abuse and misconduct by the Long Island police. And The
Oregonian beat out editorials at the Des Moines
Register challenging Iowa’s restrictive licensing laws.