The real story in the NSA scandal is the collapse of journalism [View all]

[snooper2]

Summary: A bombshell story published in the Washington Post this week alleged that the NSA had enlisted nine tech giants, including Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Apple, in a massive program of online spying. Now the story is unraveling, and the Post has quietly changed key details. What went wrong?



Updated June 9 to include details of the Guardian's coverage, a link to the Post's correction policy, and a quote from the Huffington Post.

On Thursday, June 6, the Washington Post published a bombshell of a story, alleging that nine giants of the tech industry had “knowingly participated” in a widespread program by the United States National Security Agency (NSA).

One day later, with no acknowledgment except for a change in the timestamp, the Post revised the story, backing down from sensational claims it made originally. But the damage was already done.

The primary author of the story, Barton Gellman, is a Pulitzer Prize winner, and the Washington Post has a history in investigative journalism that goes back to Watergate and All the President’s Men. On a roster of journalistic failures, this one has to rank near the very top.

This story was part of a busy week for attention-grabbing stories on the topic of U.S. Government surveillance. The Post was playing catch-up to the Guardian, whose UK and US editions had broken numerous stories, several of them by-lined by Glenn Greenwald. On Wednesday, the Guardian had published details of a Top Secret court order that required Verizon to hand over records disclosing the call data of millions of its customers. On Friday, they published another classified document outlining a U.S. Presidential Policy Directive to draw up a hit list for cyber-attacks.

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http://www.zdnet.com/the-real-story-in-the-nsa-scandal-is-the-collapse-of-journalism-7000016570/