[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.