I think you are asking two related questions. A "voice of reason" is "a person who influences others to act sensibly." Bruce Schneier is a voice of reason in in

I think you are asking two related questions. A "voice of reason" is "a person who influences others to act sensibly." Bruce Schneier is a voice of reason in information security, with frequent op-ed pieces and interviews, so Snowden is not the only person in that role. I'll interpret your question as: how does "a voice" become "the voice above the rest", and thus a person become a "demigod"? I have no exact answer, but I can suggest a few things related to how news is organized and presented. First is the lure of secret knowledge. Pay attention to the news and you'll hear code phrases like "unnamed White House official". These are almost always deliberate, officially sanctioned leaks, structured to make it sound secret, and thus more influential. Look at the various agencies (CIA, FBI, etc.) who declare that they have the 'real' information, which is so dangerous that they have to keep it secret, and so dangerous that we need to give them carte blanche. In a related point, this is also a reason why ex-senior officials, and ex-high-level military officers, etc. get to be on the news; they have or had access to this secret information and get to be the gatekeepers/interpreters for us of what's "really" going on. Second is the news cycle. With an infodump, the news gets old. After a month or two the official response is "that's all behind us; we need to look to the future". Look at Wikileaks for an example. But by stringing the document release over years, it's always fresh news - fresh secret news. Which means there may need to be a new government response, which makes it a new news story. This keeps people like Snowden in the news. (You wrote "just grant us access"; my distinction is that his leak continues to grant access rather than granted access.) Third is the ability to sound reasonable and look normal. Public speaking is hard. Snowden manages to make statements, answer questions, be consistent, and keep on topic much better than most people I know. This is the sort of person that newspeople prefer to talk to, because it makes their job much easier - they know what they are going to get, roughly how long it will take to get it, and it won't require extra work on their side. The "look normal" part is important because it's an easy thing to get pidgeon-holed as someone who only does something for the attention, and looking different puts you part-way into that hole.