Four reporters from two of the recognized publications in the world may have not realize that by helping former US government contractor Edward Snowden expose his employer's massive surveillance efforts, they will stand in line to receive the highest honor for journalism. The Salt Lake Tribune said that on Monday, Columbia University on the recommendation of a board comprised journalists and others will be handing out the Pulitzer Prizes potentially to Barton Gellman of The Washington Post and Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Ewan MacAskill of The Guardian. The local paper said the Washington Post already received a George Polk Award for national security reporting last week.
The disclosures Snowden had in possession and subsequently reported by Gellman of the Post and Greenwald, Poitras and MacAskill of the Guardian revealed that the US government through its National Security Agency collected and stored information about an entire network-worth of phone calls and emails made by Americans. The order was reportedly done based on its classified interpretations of laws that were passed following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that not only gripped the US, but the world of what Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda organization could do. The Salt Lake Tribune said that because of the leaks through the news reports, proposals about the federal agency's policy overhaul has been submitted, which also included planned changes in the way the US government conduct their surveillance on strategic countries and allies.
Aside from the reporter, contenders for the Pulitzer prize include Andrea Elliott of The New York Times. Elliot herself won a Polk Award for local reporting for doing a five-part series on Dasani Coates, one of the 22,000 homeless children in New York City, which is titled "Invisible Child." John Cichowski of The Record is also up for the Pulitzer prize, the local Salt Lake City paper said, for helping to break open the George Washington Bridge scandal, of which Governor Chris Christie's legal representative vindicated him in an internal probe ordered by his employer himself. Cichowski was the first person who wrote about the massive traffic jams that was due to the closure of lanes in Fort Lee.
