DAVID GREGORY: To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime with....journalists being at the forefront!
GLENN GREENWALD: I think it’s pretty extraordinary that anybody who would call themself a journalist would publicly muse about whether or not other journalists should be charged with felonies. The assumption in your question, David, is completely without evidence, the idea that I’ve aided and abetted him in any way. The scandal that arose in Washington before our stories began was about the fact that the Obama administration is trying to criminalize investigative journalism by going through the emails and phone records of AP reporters, accusing a Fox News journalist of the theory that you just embraced: being a co-conspirator with felony—in felonies for working with sources. If you want to embrace that theory, it means that every investigative journalist in the United States who works with their resources, who receives classified information, is a criminal. And it’s precisely those theories and precisely that climate that has become so menacing in the United States. It’s why The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer said investigative reporting has come to a "standstill"—her word—as a result of the theories that you just referenced.
-snip-
GLENN GREENWALD: Right. And, actually, Andrew Ross Sorkin, the extremely Wall Street-friendly New York Times quote-unquote "reporter" who covers Wall Street, apparently went on CNBC this morning and essentially speculated or suggested that I ought to be arrested, as well. You know, it’s interesting, Amy. I don’t know of anybody who has a lower opinion of the Beltway media, generally, of David Gregory, specifically—for that matter, Andrew Ross Sorkin, specifically—than I do. And yet, it actually is even surprising to me to watch them openly do the dirty work of the U.S. government in essentially suggesting publicly that journalists who report on what the government is doing ought to be turned into criminals.
You know, one of the main criticisms that I’ve voiced about the Beltway media is that they’re not adversarial to the government at all, but actually that they are servants of the government, mouthpieces for it. Lots of other people have made that critique, including you, Amy. And I think it’s almost like Christmas, for those of us who believe that, to watch this gift being handed to us that so vividly proves it, that rather than defend what is supposed to be their right that they are supposed to safeguard, which is freedom of the press, they’re leading the chorus against other journalists on behalf of the government that they serve, demanding essentially and theorizing that we’re guilty of crimes for doing what journalists are supposed to do, which is shining a light on what political officials are doing in the dark.