Whistleblowing

The Intercept Shuts Down Access to Snowden Trove

First Look Media announced on Wednesday that it was shutting down access to whistleblower Edward Snowden’s massive trove of leaked NSA documents.

Over the past several years, The Intercept, which is owned by First Look Media, has maintained a research team to handle the large number of documents provided by Snowden to Intercept journalists Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald.

But in an email to staff on Wednesday evening, First Look CEO Michael Bloom said that as other major news outlets had “ceased reporting on it years ago,” the Intercept had decided to “focus on other editorial priorities” after expending five years combing through the archive.

“The Intercept is proud of its reporting on the Snowden archive, and we are thankful to Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald for making it available to us,” Bloom wrote.