When the British government came to The Guardian offices to destroy computers containing documents leaked by Edward Snowden, editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger wouldn’t let them.

He had his staff smash the computers themselves.

“Members of the British government watched as we smashed our own computers because I didn’t want them to be the ones doing the smashing,” he said. “Smashing computers is an art form. It’s harder than you think because they were very specific about how to destroy them.”

Rusbridger was given the seventh annual Tully Award for Free Speech for his work in the leaking of the National Security Agency’s surveillance activities by whistleblower Edward Snowden. As the 2014 recipient, Rusbridger answered questions from Roy Gutterman, director of the Tully Center for Free Speech and a professor in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, in the Joyce Hergenhan auditorium on Wednesday night in front of more than 100 members of the SU community.

Rusbridger recounted the story of publishing Snowden’s information, starting with when Snowden first contacted Glenn Greenwald, a former writer for The Guardian.

“Snowden didn’t go to The New York Times or the Washington Post or any other mainstream media outlet because he knew that they would sit on the story and the information would never be published,” he said. “He went to Greenwald because he’s not a conventional journalist and Snowden knew he could do the story justice.”

The first 48 hours after Greenwald pitched the story idea was like “speed-dating” because he had to make sure Snowden was who he said he was and had to assess all of the documents, Rusbridger said.

“Snowden is a very articulate man. He talked fluently for five hours about the leaked surveillance, which was very impressive,” he said.

Rusbridger said Snowden helped reporters with the complexity of the documents and said that no one had ever leaked information from the NSA before.

The British government was not happy about the leaked documents and Rusbridger said he was “essentially interrogated” during a parliamentary meeting. In general, the reaction from the British government was more severe than from the American government, he said.

“The First Amendment — the words wrapped around this very building — means something to Americans,” he said. “Free speech is a concept that has been ingrained in the American mind for a very long time, and this is much different from the United Kingdom and the rest of the world.”

During the ceremony, Rusbridger offered words of advice to aspiring journalists. If journalism students want to be employable, they need to partner with engineers and others who know technology. It’s through this type of collaboration that “the most interesting things happen.”

Rusbridger said social media has been the main contributor to the major changes in journalism and said sometimes he wishes he could go back to his youth to experience the “new breed” of journalism.

“One thing is not changing in journalism and that is newspapers. And I don’t just mean print publications — I mean resilient organizations with professional training standards that when under ferocious attack can defend its standards,” Rusbridger said. “But what is changing about journalism is exciting. I love not knowing exactly where journalism is going.”

Published on October 2, 2014 at 12:33 am

Contact Sara: smswann@syr.edu | @saramswann