Snowden Ally Tells CNN Why He Did John Oliver Interview
John Oliver last night became one of the rare individuals who have gotten to interview Edward Snowden face-to-face, and the only comedian to do so. Oliver mixed in some tough questions about whether Snowden read all the documents he handed over with some lighthearted talk of “dick pics” and whether the government is able to access them.
But that all begs the question: why did Snowden agree to sit down with a comedian in the first place? (Aside from some sort of conspiracy that Oliver did this to get people watching Citizenfour on HBO.)
Well, a source close to Snowden provided an interesting quote to CNN’s Brian Stelter: “The reason why we chose John Oliver is because of his journalism.”
Yes, apparently Snowden was impressed by Oliver’s big segment last year on net neutrality.
Oliver is, again, a comedian, but he’s been praised over the past year for doing actual investigative journalism with his in-depth focus on many big issues. Well, for the record, this is what Oliver said months ago when asked about the “journalism” label:
“We are making jokes about the news and sometimes we need to research things deeply to understand them, but it’s always in service of a joke. If you make jokes about animals, that does not make you a zoologist. We certainly hold ourselves to a high standard and fact-check everything, but the correct term for what we do is ‘comedy.'”
You can watch Oliver’s full segment with Snowden here, via HBO:
[image via screengrab]
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