You're absolutely right, and I've been intentionally avoiding a lot of mainstream news sources on this so my overall picture is mostly what I've been reading about what people are reporting.

I also don't mean to come across as overly paranoid, I don't think men in suits with dark glasses popped into NYT offices with a pre-written story in hand.

However this is the place in the news cycle where we've gotten over the initial shock, and start wanting to focus our energy on something. This would ideally be the part of the processes where we collectively ask "Now what do we do to make sure the NSA stops this?" But instead the question is "Hey, what can we find if we look through Snowden's laundry".

And the thing that I find really interesting is that Snowden's laundry is very boring. Painting Assange as extremely arrogant and only using Wikileaks to feed is own egomania, while also being a potential rapists feeling from justice is an interesting story. Snowden having no HS degree and doesn't get along with his neighbors? Not so much.

They may not have had "men in suits" with a pre-written story - but Woolsey [Ex CIA Head] was on NPR yesterday. I KNEW that he was going to provide a slant for people to be swayed by - so I took notes:

The first thing he said was that Snowden was, by this release, attempting to make the decision for us about having this information public and this was "extraordinarily terrible" that he would "make the decision for us"

Then he said that this action "makes it easier for terrorists to avoid being monitored" because Snowden was explaining exactly how the monitored communications actually get monitored and thus terrorists will be able to avoid it.

Then he went on to repeatedly state how "full of himself" and arrogant Snowden is. He said that he is so full of himself that he thinks he is better than both congress and the president. He said "he is so full of himself that he barely even knows what actual good conscious is!"

He said that "collection is NOT eavesdropping" and the scope of this collection is due to the new world we live in. He said that for normal people it shouldnt matter - if you talk to some friend every day but then out of the blue you call a terrorist, then a red flag is raised.

I had to drop the convo at this point as I had a Dr. appt..

The guy was an utter joke - the level of palpable disdain and contempt for Snowden was almost unbearable.

Many knew that the smear campaign was going to start - it was even posted about a couple days ago on /r/conspiracy.

In this video - Woolsey even says "we are not focused on terrorists" -- He is a tool.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/video/thefold/fmr-cia-dir-wool...

I heard the whole thing and it did not get better. It was rather uncomfortable in how the interviewer just basically let him go with whatever statement or rant he wanted to make. Little to no follow-ups, no interjections or disagreements that I recall, nor any real thoughtful questions.

It was as if both were reading lines from a cue card.

EDIT: Also, just remembering, at least once he was allowed to not answer a direct question by rambling on with rhetoric that had little to do with the question. Plus, he tried to pass off the idea that Snowden only saw a small section of the big picture so that he had no idea what the total represented, meaning he couldn't possibly know if it were bad or not, but at the same time it was totally devastating to the country's security that he leaked what he did know.

Absolutely nailed it with this comment, wish I could upvote this more than once. How is it still the case that nobody is doing anything about this? Is there anything we can do about it?

I mean, did anyone read the David Brooks article that was linked to? It was absolutely ridiculously stupid, and David Brooks is a very intelligent guy and experienced reporter -- there's got to be something going on there.

How could we all be so short-sighted as to focus on literally anything about Snowden, when anything about his personal life (which, as you mentioned, there is very little of any consequence) is dwarfed in importance by the fact that there's a gigantic network of lies around the government spying on us that still nobody has officially fessed up to?

I too was shocked.. David Brooks took some weird slant on the guy not reflecting well before taking action, and betraying his family yadda yadda.

Basically a character assassination, rather than looking at the issue.

I think its pretty obvious the material was filtered pretty well..theres basically no hard facts there, bare minimum to support the claim. Which I think is responsible whistle-blowing.

David Brooks is among the most disgustingly boot-licking, power-worshiping authoritarians I've ever read in print, so his reaction here was not surprising at all. As always, here he is whining that people won't just shut up and trust the existing institutions and power structures without stopping to question whether they have earned that trust.

Another typical example: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/12/opinion/brooks-the-followe...

> I don't think men in suits with dark glasses popped into NYT offices with a pre-written story in hand.

Funny thing is that they probably did. They get there every day, with pre-written stories from several different sources. You can hire them for some $10k a month if you want. (I'm just not sure that they use suits.)

True. I remember when Newswipe had a story on how news are made. It's not a pretty story. From their tales, most reporters don't report, but pay PR firms to pretty much write the article for them.

The articles are probably indistinguishable from real reports for most audiences, so reporters lap it up like milk. I mean why write, when you can pay someone else to write them for you?