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Both ABC's Brian Ross and NBC's Andrea Mitchell folded in other aspects of their network's coverage to flesh out coverage of the NSA. Ross reported that Snowden would be prosecuted under the Espionage Act -- but not for treason -- even though he used a soundbite from Speaker John Boehner on Good Morning America denouncing Snowden as a "traitor." As for Mitchell, she threw to her colleague Ian Williams, who stood outside the Mira Hotel in Hong Kong, where Snowden is no longer staying.
NBC's Mitchell gave a hat tip to Salon.com for its background on how Snowden executed his leak: he contacted moviemaker Laura Poitras after he saw The Program, her video profile of former NSA spy William Denny. Snowden's tip-off that he was Poitras' source when they met in a Hong Kong hotel lobby was that he was the one playing with a Rubik's Cube.
CBS assigned Wyatt Andrews to a follow-up on Big Data. He pointed out that Google collects more detailed information on individuals for its data mining and advertising sales than the National Security Agency. A key difference is that Google's collection is with our permission -- permission that we grant, whether we know it or not, whenever we communicate by Gmail, type in a search query in Google.com, or keep an Android smart phone active.
As for the police crackdown against protestors in Istanbul, NBC's Richard Engel proved he was there by talking through his gas mask; CBS' Holly Williams proved she was there by wiping tears from her uncovered eyes. On ABC, anchor Diane Sawyer used slippery language to introduce Alex Marquardt as being "on the crackdown" and Marquardt's report showed himself mingling with protestors. But that had been earlier in the twelve-day showdown. His actual report was filed, remotely and tearlessly, from Tel Aviv.
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