Hey NBC's David Gregory WTF?!
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Tim Russert died just over 5 years ago and his loss is still being felt... especially to anyone that watched Meet the Press yesterday.
When Russert died, David Gregory took over the show and many feel that it really never has been the same.
Yesterday, Gregory interviewed Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who has broken much of the news on National Security Agency (NSA) story.
Gregory asked Greenwald for details on where his source, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Gregory wanted to know where Snowden was headed and if he felt Snowden had broken the law?
All fine questions, but then he went over the edge, asking whether Greenwald himself had broken the law:
GREGORY: Final question for you…. To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?
Greenwald blasted away:
GREENWALD: I think it’s pretty extraordinary that anybody who would call themselves a journalist would publicly muse about whether or not other journalists should be charged with felonies. The assumption in your question, David, is completely without evidence, the idea that I’ve aided and abetted him in any way. The scandal that arose in Washington before our stories began was about the fact that the Obama administration is trying to criminalize investigative journalism by going through the e-mails and phone records of AP reporters, accusing a Fox News journalist of the theory that you just embraced, being a co-conspirator in felonies, for working with sources.
If you want to embrace that theory, it means that every investigative journalist in the United States who works with their sources, who receives classified information, is a criminal. And it’s precisely those theories and precisely that climate that has become so menacing in the United States. It’s why The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer said, “Investigative reporting has come to a standstill,” her word, as a result of the theories that you just referenced.
GREGORY: Well, the question of who’s a journalist may be up to a debate with regards to what you’re doing. And of course anybody who’s watching this understands I was asking a question; that question has been raised by lawmakers, as well. I’m not embracing anything. But obviously, I take your point.
Greenwald wasn't done when he left the show tweeting:
Tim Russert....you my friend are missed.