Notes from the Polk Awards

Laura Poitras & Glenn Greenwald Back in U.S. for First Time Since Breaking NSA-Snowden Story

Democracy Now

April 11, 2014

Ten months ago, Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald flew to Hong Kong to meet National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. They soon began exposing a trove of secrets about the NSA and the national surveillance state. They didn’t enter the United States again-until today. In this exclusive video, you can watch Poitras and Greenwald speaking for the first time since their return to the country, on Friday afternoon at the George Polk Awards in New York City. They were joined by their colleagues Ewen MacAskill of The Guardian and Barton Gellman of The Washington Post, who shared with them the George Polk Award for National Security Reporting.

“We Won’t Succumb to Threats”: Journalists Return to U.S. for First Time Since Revealing NSA Spying

Democracy Now

Monday, April 14, 2014

Poitras and Greenwald did not return to the United States until this past Friday, when they flew from Berlin to New York to accept the George Polk Award for National Security Reporting. They arrived not knowing if they would be detained or subpoenaed after Director of National Intelligence James Clapper described journalists working on the NSA story as Snowden’s “accomplices.” At a news conference following the George Polk Award ceremony, Poitras and Greenwald took questions from reporters about their reporting and the government intimidation it has sparked.

“This Award is for Snowden”: Greenwald, Poitras Accept Polk Honor for Exposing NSA Surveillance

Democracy Now

Monday, April 14, 2014

In their acceptance speeches, Poitras and Greenwald paid tribute to their source. “Each one of these awards just provides further vindication that what [Snowden] did in coming forward was absolutely the right thing to do and merits gratitude, and not indictments and decades in prison,” Greenwald said. “None of us would be here … without the fact that someone decided to sacrifice their life to make this information available,” Poitras said. “And so this award is really for Edward Snowden.”