[eightyone]

Greenwald has written for years about abusive government by both the Republicans and Democrats. He was the best person to pick, in my opinion. Lest us not forget that the Washington Post sat on the documents. So perhaps Snowden did contact other journalists and they weren't interested or just strung him along.

[mpyne]

> Lest us not forget that the Washington Post sat on the documents

I think 72 hours is hardly a reasonable deadline demand for fact-checking from a reputable publication.

[jessaustin]

Is the 72 hours counted from when Snowden submitted material, or from when The Guardian published?

Anyway, it's fairly common for WP to publish articles describing events of the last several hours. Presumably a shorter fact-checking interim is required in such cases.

[mpyne]

> Presumably a shorter fact-checking interim is required in such cases.

This isn't talking about news reporting about a current event, this is talking about a major scoop of highly secret government programs.

In the event both Guardian and WaPo had to backtrack to various degrees on what they claimed of PRISM, so obviously there was more "fact-checking" yet to do.

[jessaustin]

...obviously there was more "fact-checking" yet to do.

When is that ever not the case? News media retractions are not a bad thing in and of themselves. Occasionally a flawed story will harm a private citizen, but that isn't possible here, as we are talking about the activities of public servants.