Five leading Australian editors have joined the growing group of news organisations around the world in condemning the Daily Mail in Britain for publishing an editorial describing the Guardian as "the paper that helps Britain's enemies" for its series of revelations on the NSA’s global surveillance network.

Garry Linnell, director of Fairfax Media which publishes the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age, described the Mail’s editorial as “comical” and exhibiting a “profound and alarming complacency about the roles of media and government”. Darren Goodsir, editor-in-chief of the Sydney Morning Herald and the Sun-Herald said it “beggars belief” that the Mail had condemned “the underlying principles of freedom of speech – and the need to hold those in power accountable through the publication of material that is in the public interest”.

Andrew Holden, editor of the Age, also condemned the Daily Mail’s attack, saying the NSA revelations “are demonstrably in the public interest”.

Andrew Jaspan, editor of the Conversation, said those attacking the Guardian’s NSA revelations “have an altogether different agenda” which should be “the subject of legitimate public questioning and exposure”.

Crikey's editor, Jason Whittaker, said the revelations had gone on to inform the public of “an issue that is likely to be a defining one of our generation”.

On Friday the Guardian published reactions to the Mail editorial from editors around the world, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Hindu and Der Spiegel. All were supportive of the Guardian’s coverage.

The Daily Mail said on Thursday that the Guardian had acted with “lethal irresponsibility” by reporting the NSA files leaked to the paper by the whistleblower Edward Snowden. The editorial followed comments from Andrew Parker, the head of Britain's domestic intelligence agency MI5, which claimed that the Snowden leaks had undermined the fight against terrorism.

Parker did not mention Snowden by name but said revelations about operational methods of the British intelligence agency GCHQ “hands the advantage to the terrorists”.

In August the Guardian revealed that the US government had paid at least £100m to GCHQ to secure access to British intelligence-gathering programs.