The last time this story was front page news for the NYT was June 23, when they reported on Hong Kong officials letting Snowden go. On June 22 they reported on Snowden being officially charged. And prior to that on June 20, when there was a story about the "complex reality" of Silicon Valley. All of these stories are sympathetic in tone and focus to the administration. Is anyone really going to characterize them as hard-hitting investigative reporting on the substance of the allegations?
There is no lack of investigative reporting that could be done on this story (most obvious question: did Congress intend to authorize warrantless dragnet surveillance), some of which is happening elsewhere, making it hardly a paranoid leap to point out that NYT coverage has been muted and uncritical at best.
Well, how dare they not put him on the front page as often as you would like. And I suppose because your analysis stops on June 20 I'm supposed to forget any reporting that they did on him in the weeks prior.
I would personally prefer they stopped feeding the Snowden soap opera and focused instead on meaningful policy and governance questions, such as:
* did Congress intend to authorize warrantless surveillance when it passed the legislation being used by the NSA to justify its current policies and wrap them in a cloak of legality?
* which of the leaked materials w/r/t NSA surveillance can and should be considered highly-classified? What is the national security justification for keeping these materials out of public view?
* if Snowden was in a position of administrative privilege that gave him access to highly-sensitive materials without reasonable oversight, why was he employed by a private-sector company? What are the implications of this for FOIA requests, administrative costs, government transparency and checks against potential abuse? (seriously... what on earth is B.A. doing in this story?)
* do the stories released by the NSA to justify warrantless surveillance really justify the actions taken in the light of the law? i.e. is stopping a cab driver from sending 8k to Somalia really the sort of urgent and time-sensitive national security concern that should preclude the government from spending a day or two to get a targeted warrant?
Regardless of whether we agree or disagree on what a reasonable person would conclude on these questions, it seems self-evident that these questions are much more important than most of what the NYT has treated as front-page news on the subject matter.
http://web.archive.org/web/*/nytimes.com
The last time this story was front page news for the NYT was June 23, when they reported on Hong Kong officials letting Snowden go. On June 22 they reported on Snowden being officially charged. And prior to that on June 20, when there was a story about the "complex reality" of Silicon Valley. All of these stories are sympathetic in tone and focus to the administration. Is anyone really going to characterize them as hard-hitting investigative reporting on the substance of the allegations?
There is no lack of investigative reporting that could be done on this story (most obvious question: did Congress intend to authorize warrantless dragnet surveillance), some of which is happening elsewhere, making it hardly a paranoid leap to point out that NYT coverage has been muted and uncritical at best.