> The British press is just too controlled to make a real difference in British politics (flipping between red and blue depending on who visits you before an election on your super yacht doesn't count).
And yet it was The Guardian (a UK paper) that played a huge part in breaking the Snowden story, and, IIRC, were one of the primary conduits for the Wikileaks information.
I hate to say this, but the Guardian is now split in two. The UK half is subject to a D-Notice and is under the threat of contempt of court should it publish anything in the UK Guardian newspaper that discusses Snowden and the GCHQ link.
The US part of the Guardian is now the primary reporting mechanism for all of the NSA stories.
Whilst Britain has somewhat a "free and independent press", it is not independent enough to act as a viable 4th estate. Most newspapers are owned by large conglomerates in the UK. These people are very powerful and very rich. They have the power to sway elections. They have done so, and will continue doing so. They also have a shrinking market and profit margin, as online publishing continues to chew into their traditional printed newspaper business. They also have a swathe of new media comapnies who saw the opportunity online way before they did, and as a result they are playing catch up.
On the other side you have the government (of the day) who find it in their interests to maintain the status quo. The relationship between politics and press might be a love-hate one, but above all in Whitehall it is a cosy one.
Cosy relationships are not what the British public (or any real democracy) need (in my humble opinion). They need people like Greenwald, who stick out their necks because they believe in what is right and what is wrong. Above all they believe in liberty. Ironically, they have a mixed relationship to privacy, but in this particular case privacy is being protected rather than being abused.
I applaud Geeenwald and I applaud the Guardian. Without people like these to ask questions and publish the truth we would be in a worse state than we are today.
Do you know who controls The Guardian? They have their own interests. This is some big politics here with major forces involved. Zoom out to see the whole picture in mass media: follow who controls the particular mass media, what they report about, what they don't report about, and maybe you can outline some parts of the Big Game.
And yet it was The Guardian (a UK paper) that played a huge part in breaking the Snowden story, and, IIRC, were one of the primary conduits for the Wikileaks information.