News Anchor Battles With Viewers Over Decision To Air Snowden’s Comments

The second British TV network Channel 4 announced Edward Snowden as this year’s “alternative” Christmas messenger — meaning he would be speaking right after the Queen. People flipped out, and the channel has been getting social media blowback for the decision. But what made this particularly interesting was that veteran news anchor Jon Snow jumped into the fray and engaged with critics to defend not just the decision, but Snowden himself.

Here’s some of the tweets sent Channel 4’s way after the announcement, just to give you some idea:

Normally, if news anchors tackle issues like this on Twitter, they’re rather restrained in how they respond, but Snow obviously didn’t care and said exactly what he thinks about Snowden.

There was also this exchange with one critic in particular.

An editor for Channel 4 News also weighed in with a cheeky message.

Somewhat unfortunately, though, none of Snow’s critics thought to throw out the really obvious line they could have used there.

[photos via screengrab]

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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac

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