Clearly, the Post's Editorial has quietly excused a lot of its own conduct. I'm less interested in the argument about the Post's hypocrisy --- because I'm sure I'll end up agreeing with you about that.

Do you mean: is it possible that the Post is correct that Snowden should not be pardoned? Yes, that's possible. There are reasonable arguments to be advanced against a pardon. IMHO these arguments are wrong, but as I said in my blog post, reasonable people can disagree.

But even if one suspends disbelief and concedes for the sake of argument that Snowden should not be pardoned (is that what you meant?) that in no way excuses what the Post did. The Post is not an disinterested observer here, it is an active participant in the events, at best a co-conspirator, and at worst the actual culpable party. The editorial is entirely self-serving, and worse (because this is supposed to be a newspaper) it doesn't acknowledge that it is entirely self-serving. And it is self-serving at the expense of a man who (and there can be no reasonable dispute over this) has taken great personal risk to bring wrong-doing by the government to light.

So no, I don't see any possibility of any kind of redemption here. There are only two possibilities: either the release of the information was a crime that should be punished, or it was not. If the former, then the Post is at least as culpable as Snowden if not more so, and it needs to turn over the people who made the decision to publish for prosecution (or at least advance an argument as to why they should not be prosecuted while Snowden should be -- I can't wait to hear that argument), and it probably needs to close its doors like the News of the World did. On the assumption that releasing the Snowden documents was illegal, what the Post did was much worse than what NoW did.

Maybe another way to put this is: is there an editorial they could have written that would advance their opinion about clemency and not been treacherous?

It obligates them not to do it as an isolated act. If they want to reverse course now they certainly can (it's always OK to admit you were wrong). But then they need to admit that they are culpable along with Snowden, submit the responsible parties (some of whom are surely on the editorial board) for prosecution, return the Pulitzer, and close up shop (or at the very least resign and turn over control to a completely new set of people).

At any rate: am I adequately summarizing your belief by saying that regardless of what they write, if the Washington Post Editorial Page genuinely believes that Snowden shouldn't be given clemency, then they should also believe that the Washington Post itself should be shuttered (or turned over to a different team)?

Suppose the U.S. manages to exfiltrate Snowden from Russia somehow. Do you seriously believe that, in the absence of clemency, there is less than a 100% chance he'll be prosecuted? Being against clemency without taking a position on prosecution is kind of like advocating jumping off a cliff but not taking a position on whether or not you fall to the ground. There may be a semantic distinction, but no practical one.

> am I adequately summarizing your belief by saying that regardless of what they write, if the Washington Post Editorial Page genuinely believes that Snowden shouldn't be given clemency, then they should also believe that the Washington Post itself should be shuttered (or turned over to a different team)?

And that they should also be charged and prosecuted as Snowden's willing accomplices. Yes. At least if they want to be honorable (and logically consistent).

Look at the Post's justification for opposing clemency:

"The complication is that Mr. Snowden did more than that. He also pilfered, and leaked, information about a separate overseas NSA Internet-monitoring program, PRISM, that was both clearly legal and not clearly threatening to privacy. (It was also not permanent; the law authorizing it expires next year.) Worse — far worse — he also leaked details of basically defensible international intelligence operations: cooperation with Scandinavian services against Russia; spying on the wife of an Osama bin Laden associate; and certain offensive cyber operations in China."

It was the Post (and the Guardian) who made the decisions to publish these documents, not Snowden! He had neither the time not the inclination to make these kinds of editorial decisions. He grabbed what he could and ran. (And let's not forget that before he did this, he tried to address the problem -- which everyone concedes was a real and very serious problem -- through the "proper channels" and was smacked down.) He then relied on others, including the Post, to filter what he had and decide what should be published and what should remain secret. If things were published that should not have been, then the Post is at least as culpable as Snowden if not more so.

I think I understand where you're coming from.

I don't agree: I don't think the Post's culpability in spreading Snowden's leak controls the appropriateness of charging Snowden. I think the two are separable issues. I understand why you don't.

Further, I'm closer to the Post editorial's position on clemency for Snowden than to the ACLU's (absent substantial new information about what Snowden did, I'd be unhappy if he spent time in prison). While I could quibble with the examples the Post chose to illustrate their position, I find the logic mostly agreeable.

Regardless of what they've reported, I think it's incumbent on the Post's editorial team to publish their genuinely held opinions on public policy issues. If they believe what they wrote, I think it's important that they published it, instead of pretending that their opinion is different to retain consistency.

But after reading everything you've written, I've come to the conclusion that regardless of the Post's position, it's a badly written editorial:

* It uses dumb examples (like PRISM) that don't fully support its argument and so you can't really reach an informed conclusion about it without a lot of previous context.

* By failing to mention the Post's own role in the story, the Post loses more or less all its credibility, which make the Editorial toothless.

Like I said, I get why we disagree. Thanks for taking the time to talk about this!

You're welcome.

I think the nature of the opinion itself makes it an unavoidable binary of betrayal / non-betrayal here, since to say now that the leaks were unjustified, is a complete reversal from their prior implicit stance.

Given that Snowden approached them for editorial oversight, and they made the executive decisions to publish some documents, to declare later that those same reports were illegal would have to be a betrayal of their source's trust by definition, regardless of whether it is justified, moral or correct.

I agree that hypocrisy is an independent dimension. They could do a complete moral cleansing by taking responsibility for their actions, but even that wouldn't negate the betrayal.

As an aside, I am not put off by the treachery or disloyalty as much (since that can be inevitable at times - Snowden himself betrayed his employers out of his moral convictions), just WaPo's intellectual dishonesty as they went about it.

Simply put, you can say WaPo initially betrayed Snowden by (in their mind) publishing sensitive info (betrayal by incompetence). If their present thesis is correct, then they were intimately involved in increasing public harm from the leaks. At this juncture they had a number of options to make things right by their perception, but the one they chose was to attribute all blame to him (betrayal by deception).

Not that Snowden had some special right not to be betrayed. He engaged with a lot of media actors, laid a lot of trust by their sense of journalistic ethics, and had to have accepted the risk of whatever fallout could happen from some of the outlets not acting in a trustworthy manner (mitigated by how selectively he involved people). That one of them "betrayed" him by not doing their job well, or pointing fingers at him is not really interesting. Again, I find the WaPo's dishonesty about their own role more interesting.

That's too broad. The question is whether the Post assumed an obligation not to advocate for Snowden to be prosecuted for leaking the specific material they chose to publish.

I don't know what "evidence" would apply to a moral argument, but it seems like common sense to me. If I help you commit a crime, what moral standing do I have to publicly call for your prosecution?

Donald E. Graham, The Post's publisher, and Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., publisher of the New York Times, said they jointly decided to publish the document "for public safety reasons" after meeting last Wednesday with Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis J. Freeh. [...]

"From the beginning, the two newspapers have consulted closely on the issue of whether to publish under the threat of violence. We have also consulted law enforcement officials," Graham and Sulzberger said in a joint statement. "Both the attorney general and the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation have now recommended that we print this document for public safety reasons, and we have agreed to do so." [...]

"Neither paper would have printed this document for journalistic reasons," Graham said in an interview. "We thought there was an obvious public safety issue involved and therefore sought the advice of responsible federal officials. We are printing it for public safety reasons, not journalistic reasons." [0]

Okay, this doesn't explicitly support my impression that the possibility of getting a lead in the case was specifically suggested in prospect as a reason to publish, though some Wikipedia editor thinks that was the case ("[Freeh and Reno] recommended publication out of concern for public safety and in hopes that a reader could identify the author" [1]; it's not clear what citation this is based on). But it does seem to indicate that if their motives were as you suggest, they managed to keep that fact to themselves.

[0] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabo...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski#Industrial_Socie...

If you do something that you regret either immediately or after a delay, that is customarily communicated by means of an apology. That reconciles the two inconsistent behaviors.

Without an apology, their own participation is what makes it impossible for this to be considered a non-treacherous editorial.

Now add: what the Post did was more severe and "damaging" (assuming you hold that view, which I don't) than what Snowden did. It's like a murderer writing an editorial saying "no clemency for the knife salesman!" Those knife salesmen! They really should be behind bars forever, so innocent and virtuous murderers aren't tempted to use those knives, which of course they must!!!

Non linear digression - snowden the movie was way better then the rotten tomatoes review.

No. There is no dissonance here whatsoever.

Editorial just cost WaPo an unfathomable number of sources. If you're playing the right move game and consider solely the masthead's interest, carpetbombing loyalty to sources is an extremely stupid move for a masthead to make. I think this is something Greenwald missed given his characterization of WaPo acting in its own self interest; the editorial is inexplicable in that frame of reference.

There is more to it, without question.

I bet Barton Gellman is having a good day.

WaPo considered its network of government-friendly sources against a single, prominent government-unfriendly source. That's the calculus and why they can't advocate his pardon. I'm not writing a Dan Brown novel here and I'm pretty annoyed with you straw manning me to your preferred target. This would be like Barbara Starr biting Defense.

Is this really news to you, that the Washington Post tends to maintain formation with the city in its name?

I do not understand this cui bono logic.

I think it's the role of an Editorial Page to take positions on matters of current events and public policy, and do so so in good faith (ie, to relate the genuinely held and reasonably informed opinions of the staff). My take on the role of an Editorial Page seems like it's pretty much the opposite of your take, which is that the Editorial Page exists to advance the interests of the paper itself.