After the Guardian and the Washington Post won a Pulitzer Award for their coverage of National Security Agency surveillance programs, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden praised the committee’s choice.
“Today’s decision is a vindication for everyone who believes that the public has a role in government,” he said in a statement to the Guardian. “We owe it to the efforts of the brave reporters and their colleagues who kept working in the face of extraordinary intimidation, including the forced destruction of journalistic materials, the inappropriate use of terrorism laws, and so many other means of pressure to get them to stop what the world now recognises was work of vital public importance.”
He added that his document leaks “would have been meaningless without the dedication, passion, and skill of these newspapers.”