Glenn Greenwald, the journalist behind the many stories on National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance first unveiled by Edward Snowden, was interviewed this Friday for a segment to be aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet The Press.”
But strangely, host David Gregory did not conduct the interview — a fact that disappointed Greenwald and set off speculation that perhaps NBC was worried about a repeat of last year’s contentious interview between the two (very different) journalists.
On June 23 of last year — just as Snowden’s leaked documents were beginning to reveal the extent of domestic spying being perpetrated by the NSA — Greenwald appeared on “Meet The Press” for an interview with Gregory.
The discussion became extremely tense after Gregory claimed Greenwald “aided and abetted” Snowden’s lawbreaking. “Why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?” he asked
Greenwald was incensed. “I think it’s pretty extraordinary that anyone who would call themself a journalist would publicly muse about whether other journalists should be charged with felonies,” he shot back, calling Gregory’s assumption “completely without evidence” and tying it into the Obama adminstration’s larger push to “criminalize journalism.”
WATCH THE ORIGINAL INTERVIEW (June 23, 2013)
Greenwald was not charged with a crime, nor were any of the other reporters involved with Snowden. But the confrontation was widely seen and discussed, with many mocking Gregory’s push to criminalize Greenwald — particularly when Gregory had flouted Washington DC gun law on-the-air just months previously with no consequence.
In an interview with The Huffington Post Friday, Greenwald revealed he won’t get another shot at Gregory this Sunday, and will instead be sitting down with NBC justice reporter Pete Williams.
“That was really disappointing,” Greenwald claimed. “I was really looking forward to ‘Part 2’ of my interview by David Gregory, and to see what his approach was to the story, and whether or not it had changed in the 8 or 9 months since I last appeared there.”
“And instead, the interview was conducted by Pete Williams,” the former Guardian reporter lamented. “I’m not exactly certain of the machinations inside NBC as to why that happened, but that was the choice they made.”
According to Mediaite, NBC sources claim the decision to have Williams rather than Gregory conduct the interview came down to scheduling issues.
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