Harris-Perry’s commentary denies the autonomy of journalists and pundits and implies that they are somehow hypnotized by Snowden’s escapades, rendered incapable of thinking for themselves. An appropriate response to Harris-Perry would be: Many of us are talking about whether accessing and monitoring citizen information and communications is constitutional, and that information is easily accessible online. So what’s stopping you?

The list of substantive stories on the NSA’s vast surveillance apparatus and the NSA's corporate partners published by the Guardian in the last month is staggering. Couple the initial disclosures with the additional reporting that has occurred purely in response to Snowden’s leaks—which journalism professor Jay Rosen has described it as the Snowden Effect—and we have a trove of information on domestic spying kept from the American public. Just in the last week, we’ve learned about Microsoft’s broad cooperation with the NSA to give them access to encrypted messages, and more on the unaccountable FISA court’s sweeping opinions re-interpreting the Fourth Amendment and privacy law, which are all done in secret. And the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper continues to face no consequences for knowingly lying to Congress.

Pundits and commentators have instead chosen to focus on Snowden at the expense of the information he exposed, and unfortunately, pundits often drive news in this country as much as, or more than, straight reporting in newspapers. Harris-Perry is far from alone. The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank claims to believe that Snowden was justified in leaking information about the NSA’s spying, but spends more time accusing him of undermining his own cause than he does supporting that cause. The Post’s Jonathan Capehart has spent nearly 2,500 words vilifying Snowden, but next to none on the information that Snowden revealed. This list goes on.

As Kevin Gosztola wrote last week, it is these disingenuous arguments that distract from the real issue. If Harris-Perry, Milbank, or Capehart want to turn the focus from Snowden to the illegal and unconstitutional spying conducted by the NSA, they should use their considerably prominent platforms to do so. No one is stopping them.

Jillian C. York is the Director of International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The views expressed her are her own.