Greenwald: Journalism Should Expose The Lying Of The Powerful

In this interview on BBC, journalist Glenn Greenwald describes the job of journalist as to “prevent people in power from lying to the people over whom they are ruling.”  He sees the job of journalists as to “shine a light” on what government is really doing to inform the people who live in democracies. In a healthy democracy the people need to know about what the government is doing to monitor the activities of citizens. And, the more people in power abuse their power, the more they need accountability and transparency. The documents released show a broad dragnet surveillance effort by the UK and US governments of innocent citizens not involved in terrorism. Greenwald says he is in regular contact with his source, Edward Snowden. Greenwald and the Guardian has done a better job of keeping control of the NSA and UK’s GCHQ spying documents than the spy agencies have done. BBC Newsnight interviews journalist Glenn Greenwald on Edward Snowden, the PRISM revelations and mass surveillance. He repeatedly warns the journalist that she should not assume that what the government tells her is true.  The interview took place on October 3, 2013.