The 20 member board of major newspaper editors and six academics including the president of Columbia University awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service to the Washington Post and the Guardian (US) for their:
revelation of widespread secret surveillance by the National Security Agency, helping through aggressive reporting to spark a debate about the relationship between the government and the public over issues of security and privacy.
The award carefully avoids mentioning Edward Snowden, the source of the material. Of course when this same award was given to the New York Times in 1972 for the publication of the Pentagon Papers, there was no mention of Daniel Ellsberg either.
I join with those who think the board does not consider Edward Snowden, or his principal collaborators Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, to be traitors. Today there are many good posts analyzing this. Here are a few for you to dig into:
Jay Rosen on Pressthink: There is a great part at the end of Rosen's post where he recounts how Bob Woodward said Snowden made a mistake by not coming to him.
Jack Mirkinson on Huffington Post
With a bit of luck, maybe one day Edward Snowden will be able to return from Russia without fear of the firing squad.