The opening paragraph to First Look’s write-up on their latest leaking to SPIEGEL:

Der Spiegel: NSA Put Merkel on List of 122 Targeted Leaders

Secret documents newly disclosed by the German newspaper Der Spiegel on Saturday shed more light on how aggressively the National Security Agency and its British counterpart have targeted Germany for surveillance.

That’s sort of an odd way to frame it as it’s actually First Look’s employees that “disclosed” the documents and wrote the SPIEGEL article (Poitras’ name leads the SPIEGEL story byline). In a way they’ve laundered their story through SPIEGEL so they can afterward appeal to it’s authority.

politico.com

“We do the reporting first… I vet the stories,” Greenwald said. “We come with the story already formed. We work on drafts of the story. We always edit the story. We have approval rights.”

Greenwald, who is an attorney, acknowledged insisting on freelance contracts in order to supply the stories. However, he said that is itself a legal precaution aimed at ensuring that authorities treat him as a journalist and not as a source. Traditionally, sources have sometimes been subject to prosecution for disclosing secret documents, while the government has shied away from prosecuting those who act as journalists or publishers.