Newspapers in the United States and Britain on Thursday simultaneously pushed the Barack Obama administration to give the whistleblower Edward Snowden a pardon.

With Snowden, the former US National Security Agency contractor, already being deemed a hero by many in the world arena, offering him clemency would also cater to the US' interests as it could help mitigate the damage done to the US' image by Snowden's leaks.

An editorial in The Guardian, the first newspaper that published information based on Snowden's leaks, said: "We hope that calm heads within the present administration are working on a strategy to allow Mr Snowden to return to the US with dignity, and the president to use his executive powers to treat him humanely and in a manner that would be a shining example about the value of whistleblowers and of free speech itself."