The Boundary Space Between Journalism and Activism

Abstract

In addition to igniting other debates, the Snowden case re-sparked a debate concerning the relationship between activism and journalism. Although it was definitely not a completely new issue, it gained new relevance in the wake of the NSA surveillance scandal. Snowden was the starting point for different public discussions among journalists, and one of these focused on balancing potential activists’ stances while conducting aggressive and adversarial investigations, like the one that was conducted on the Snowden files. The debate intensified when the former Executive Editor of the New York Times Bill Keller published an article that was a collection of email exchanges with Glenn Greenwald that took place in the wake of the publication of the first stories based on the Snowden files (Keller 2013). The discussion between the two prominent journalists focused on the differences between Keller’s classic view of objective, balanced reporting and Greenwald’s more adversarial, opinionated while still rigorously fact-oriented style of journalism. Glenn Greenwald in particular has been very vocal in this debate, pushing his stance on journalism in several interviews and public events (Forbes 2014; Greenwald 2014, among others). In an interview with David Carr, in particular, he went straight to his point: