Back here, I admonished The Intercept for being careless about the handling of classified info. I’ve since learned it’s a bit more complicated than that.

The Intercept did indeed muck up, but it was over a then-completely-anonymous source and they tend to be treated with less care than known-but-anonymous sources. Meanwhile, no-longer-anonymous Reality Winner (no really, that’s her name) left a paper trail behind her which would have let the NSA track her down once they knew the document had been leaked. By trying to source the document, The Intercept triggered the audit which caught Winner.

Their sourcing was done sloppily, but The Intercept don’t have a monopoly on blame here.