The Intercept Shuts Down Access To Snowden Trove (thedailybeast.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Daily Beast: First Look Media announced Wednesday that it was shutting down access to whistleblower Edward Snowden's massive trove of leaked National Security Agency documents. Over the past several years, The Intercept, which is owned by First Look Media, has maintained a research team to handle the large number of documents provided by Snowden to Intercept journalists Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald. But in an email to staff Wednesday evening, First Look CEO Michael Bloom said that as other major news outlets had "ceased reporting on it years ago," The Intercept had decided to "focus on other editorial priorities" after expending five years combing through the archive. "The Intercept is proud of its reporting on the Snowden archive, and we are thankful to Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald for making it available to us," Bloom wrote. He added: "It is our hope that Glenn and Laura are able to find a new partner -- such as an academic institution or research facility -- that will continue to report on and publish the documents in the archive consistent with the public interest." Poitras reprimanded First Look Media for its decision to shut down its archives, and lay off 4 percent of its staff who had maintained them. "This decision and the way it was handled would be a disservice to our source, the risks we've all taken, and most importantly, to the public for whom Edward Snowden blew the whistle," she wrote.

"Late Thursday evening, Greenwald tweeted that both he and Poitras had full copies of the archives, and had been searching for a partner to continue research," reports The Daily Beast.

Comments

The Snowden Files Have Essentially Been Published

[tinkerton]

I think the most important bits have been published, even if this is only a tiny fraction of the whole. The main lessons to be learned from it have been communicated. After that the cost/benefit calculation just becomes much smaller. It can live on as a reference base where journalists and historians can look up data which is relevant to current events but which has little apparent value in being published outside of these events. New Look Media simple doesn't want to invest anymore in what is mostly a symbolic openness. Resistance to that assumes that there are hugely important things being covered up.