To give an example, Gladwell cherry-picks quotes to misrepresent Snowden's views in this piece. The strong stench of elitism and intellectual dishonesty in insinuating that Snowden is a fool because he claims that non-governmental institutions have important roles to play in solving social problems is typical, and I would venture to speculate that Gladwell would never say the same thing about someone like Larry Lessig (who has actually spoken with Snowden), even though they happen to hold similar views on those topics, particularly in relation to the examples Snowden gave in the quote.

Gladwell's process serves well enough as a lazy caricature for the piece but doesn't represent a good-faith articulation of his subject's views, which is hard to excuse in light of the dozens of events, thousands of tweets, etc. that are much more accessible than Ellsberg material was decades ago.

Gladwell could have interviewed Snowden and Ellsberg but probably chose not to, perhaps because it was easier to trash-talk someone whose life is under threat at an especially sensitive time (pardon consideration) for a "clever" contrast with Ellsberg than to try to represent his perspective in good faith.