The media has fallen into the well-known trap of optimizing the wrong KPI. You want to maximize trust with the public, not engagement, if you want your media company to survive if its value proposition is providing journalism and the usual benefits that come with a free press.
Unfortunately, not only is engagement the wrong metric, but it's also one which incentivizes the undermining of the actual metric you need to be optimizing. This results in a negative feedback loop, and the logical outcome is that all media companies who focus on the engagement KPI will, in the limit, become tabloids - pure entertainment, no trust. Since most outlets were already on their way to becoming politics-focused, what we're going to get are "tabloids for politics" - and that is what we see. It's just a matter of when the public accepts this transition has occurred, not if it is happening.
Getting the public to accept this has proven challenging - despite the fact that many clearly see the "opposite side" media as tabloid-like, it's been hard for the same people to accept that their own chosen media sources, who tell them things they agree with, are no different in this regard. The resistance of course is due to all the usual human biases, but it's still strange when people can see it so obviously in the media they disagree with and not apply Occam's Razor to their own.
This does mean that there's a huge opportunity if you assume trust is something people will pay for. Substack seems to provide early evidence that this is the case. Fortunately, I think the market will correct this error - and it's critical it does, because a free press is essential to ensuring our society continues without increasing oppression or war.
Glenn had a 3 hour long conversation on a podcast a few days ago where he laid out the problem really well:
Journalists have essentially become socialites. They don't want to publish articles that will rock the boat, because the people they are friends with are the ones that own that boat, invite them to parties, and are a part of their friend groups.
The reporting around this story has been absolutely unbelievable to me. This story seems like the type of thing that would normally make peoples' entire journalistic career, and yet the journalists, the people who are supposed to be a part of our protection and sense-making system are actively trying to suppress it.
I read through Glenn's draft after seeing the outrage on this thread and... it reads like a generic opinion piece.
I think he makes some good points and some dumb ones, but that's besides the point in all honesty - most of the article is him just complaining about the state of the media, making accusations of double-standards, and full of inflammatory language. There's little investigative journalism, no interviews with backing sources, no new facts laid out, just complaining about supposed wrong-doings and coverups. Some of which can be easily refuted.
Look I don't read The Intercept, but this is not newsroom material. I'm not journalist or have any kind of editing experience, but I wouldn't even run this in a school newspaper if I was put in charge. This is editorial material, pure and simple. The fact that he's complaining about censorship is eye-rolling.
I think it's pretty clear that most people here don't understand that the op-ed page and newsroom are different organizations, run by different people, and have different standards, even though they appear on the same newspaper. it's scary that these lines are being blurred more and more by the day.
But honestly, what's really probably going on is that Glenn Greenwald is tired of The Intercept and wants move full-time to his substack page. To do that he's bootstrapping his audience on his new site by manufacturing outrage. I would think most people should see through this...
Keep in mind we're just seeing Greenwald's side of this. It sure sounds like he's trying to paint it a way that makes him look good and the Intercept look bad. Lots of claims of "censorship" etc.
I want to hear their side of it as well. My guess is that there's a lot more to this story. My guess is if all his peers thought the claims were not solid enough to publish, there is probably a reason for that -- not simply a desire to "censor" someone they've worked with for years.
Remember also that the NY Post writer behind the original "Hunter Biden laptop" story refused to put their name behind the article, probably due to the flaws in the claims and evidence presented.
FYI this sob story has some precedent:
In 2014:
"I absolutely refuse to be exiled from my own country for the crime of doing journalism and I'm going to force the issue just on principle. And I think going back for a ceremony like the Polk Awards or other forms of journalistic awards would be a really good symbolic test of having to put the government in the position of having to arrest journalists who are coming back to the US to receive awards for the journalism they have done."
He wasn't arrested. He wasn't even menaced by authorities. The dude has a serious persecution complex.
It seems impossible to hold a strong opinion on this without reading the article, and in particular, seeing how it is sourced.
The elephant in the room (which Greenwald barely acknowledges in this essay) is that many mainstream news organizations have concluded that the evidence for this story was too weak to publish, and some believe it was fabricated by Russian intelligence. If Greenwald has evidence to the contrary, great, the world wants to see it, and (claims of "censorship" notwithstanding) he will have no trouble getting the word out. If all he has is salacious hearsay, it's hard to fault his former editors.
Greenwald has really fascinated me the past decade. He was on track to being one of the most prolific reporters on the planet, and he has gone really down this weird victimhood "censorship" path.
Sometimes it’s legitimate censorship. Other times, your editor is just insisting you don’t spread misinformation.
The dichotomy between Greenwald's complaints (censorship of his article despite contractual guarantees, Reality Winner cover-up, what editors forced Lee Fang to do, lack of reporting of Assange hearing, and "lack of editorial standards when it comes to viewpoints or reporting that flatter the beliefs of its liberal base") and the editor in chief response in the NYT [0] (he is a "grown person throwing a tantrum") is frightening.
Honest question: is it just me or is it getting harder to determine what is factual and what is not? It seems like the US has begun to splinter such that there are two different sets of "facts" on many issues, but of course that is not how facts work. Nevertheless, when doing research and investigation is it often hard for me to pin down the truth behind any of the "facts" that are thrown at me, whether that's by the partisans, by the media, or just by random people on HN etc.
There seems to be a premise in the USA that if Russia has a hand in true information coming to light, the bigger story is about Russia's hand in it, and not the information itself.
This narrative has been seen a lot, and often times it is invoked as the default narrative whenever things are being claimed in a particular political direction.
I would like to question this at a fundamental level. At what point does the information itself become pertinent? Shouldn't the information itself, if true, always be the focus of the story? If the information is unverified, shouldn't there be some attempt to verify it? If it cannot be verified - then it's probably best to dismiss it, but if people involved in the situation start coming forward to verify the context of the information, shouldn't it merit further investigation?
There is this guy - Tony Bobulinski. He's a navy veteran from a family of veterans and he's pretty much coming forward to say that the emails are all true. In his absence, it's ambiguous, but now that's come forward, why is there still hesitation to take this story seriously?
Frankly I find it difficult to believe that there is no coordinated media attempt to silence this story because at a personal level many of them want to cover up anything that makes one candidate look bad.
Can i put another dimension without trying to be judgmental: it seems to me that the younger generations of journalists (and audiences) are a lot more censorious by nature. I don't know the causes of it but it's certainly very prevalent, and it seems all the 'dissenters' are a few decades older. There was for a while a prevalent narrative of "safety" or "safe spaces", but that has passed, and it seems that it has been replaced by a general tendency to hide ucomfortable problems "under the rug".
Greenwald posted some emails he says are from his editor at the Intercept. [0]
Reading the emails, his editor sounds pretty reasonable. And I think it's ironic that a journalist would cite ethics as his reason for being so hell-bent on publishing an article that does nothing but repeat and amplify unsubstantiated suspicions about a candidate a few days before the election. Greenwald's point-by-point attempt at rebutting his editor supports the editor's perspective, in my opinion. He describes the lack of evidence in a way that conspiratorially suggests that the evidence exists, and his takedown of the bigger media outlets consists of noting that they investigated and ran articles that failed to produce any damning evidence... which is exactly what his article would do, except his article would frame the lack of evidence as evidence of a bigger conspiracy.
I think his faith that there's a story there is exactly what you need in an investigative journalist, and I think stopping him from publishing anyway when he doesn't find it is exactly what he needs in an editor.
The first two of the three hours of him being a guest on Joe Rogan yesterday were brilliant. I've never heard someone so eloquently tear down the shiny facades of what passes as
high-brow "journalism" these days.
Somewhat Off Topic: Glen just did an interview on Joe Rogan [1]. I would suggest it may be worth watching for those interested in this. He discussed some of these issues.
"as a last-ditch attempt to avoid being censored, I encouraged them to air their disagreements with me by writing their own articles that critique my perspectives and letting readers decide who is right"
That's not how this works. If the editor concludes that it's a garbage story dropped a few days before the election in an attempt to influence the election, you don't run it and then "let the readers decide who is right". As he well knows, all that matters is that the story runs, not whether it's shown to be false months after the election is over. Strange that he thinks his readers are that gullible.
I want to be clear that I'm not claiming to know the truth as it relates to this story, only that this is the position of the editors, and that his argument is nonsense.
You're right that it's not how this works. Media organizations are not interested truth or accuracy of their stories, but simply how many ads and subscriptions the stories can sell. And that's not the say they are motivated by greed - even worse, they are often motivated by missionary-like zeal to promote a cause. So of course it would follow that they have no interest in publishing anything disagreeable to their readership.
However, Greenwald's argument definitely should be how it works if a media organization cares about truth and open debate. In this case, it seems very hard to believe that a story -- written by a credible journalist, with a long track record, who literally founded the organization -- was garbage.
I think Glenn hoped to create a media entity that regarded truth as the measure of merit of a story vs. how well it promoted a cause and ads/subscriptions. Now that the experiment has failed so obviously, good for him for moving on.
> "If the editor concludes that it's a garbage story dropped a few days before the election in an attempt to influence the election"
This is bordering on hyperbole.
1. Glenn Greenwald isn't one to produce a "Garbage Story," he's a credible journalist with a long history of dropping bombshells. He's dropped bombshells about both the right AND the left. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Greenwald#Awards
2. It's the job of the media to do exactly what you have alluded to within the last half of the statement above. All sides do just that every single election I've been alive, all the way up to election day. But this time, only one side is allowed to do it.
3. Glenn Greenwald is a co-founder of The Intercept and is provided contractual rights to editorial freedom.
The fact that this comment is the top comment on this thread is extremely worrying. This is censorship, nothing less.
> If the editor concludes that it's a garbage story dropped a few days before the election in an attempt to influence the election, you don't run it and then "let the readers decide who is right".
On the other hand, if Greenwald actually does have, or believe he has, a contract which guarantees him immunity to outside editing as he seems to claim ("The Intercept’s editors, in violation of my contractual right of editorial freedom, censored an article I wrote this week") -- which seems somewhat implausible as presented, but that's the story presented -- then the offer he presents also makes sense as what amounts to an attempt to essential settle the dispute over rights and obligations out of court with a compromise which arguably could be better for both his journalistic interests and the Intercept's financial interests than a public, after-the-fact breach of contract dispute in the courts.
>If the editor concludes that it's a garbage story dropped a few days before the election in an attempt to influence the election, you don't run it and then "let the readers decide who is right".
Occhams razor:
Glen Greenwald is one of the most respected journalists on the planet. the man is a modern day Cronkite. his character is beyond the pale when it comes to accurate journalism so it begs the question: What is Glen reporting that an editor finds so 'garbage' as to risk their entire future career on censoring this man?
Are you of the opinion that all story publication should stop in the days before the election? If not, how do you reconcile that with this?
Your argument seems to be based on an assumption that the story was garbage, with the evidence being that the editor pulled it, which begs the question.
His argument is not nonsense. Even assuming you buy the line that the media is not covering the story because it has "has all the hallmarks" of a Russian disinformation campaign as was argued by all the media outlets it makes no sense why they wouldn't cover it (unless your assume they are worried about how it might effect the election). Just months before the idea that a trump administration offical (or close personal adviser/lawyer) was working with a foreign power to effect the election was a impeachable offense! Now it's not even worth informing the public about?
Greenwald has never operated in a way that concerns itself with the consequences of actions. The philosophy is "we report, freely, what we believe to be true and fair, and whats comes of it does not matter".
I am personally torn on this kind of philosophy. Would that everyone was like this, but since they are not, surely there are times when too much is on the line to behave this way?
But it is a bit weird that here we are again, on the cusp of another trump presidency, and Greenwald swoops in to Trump's aid, again. Not sure how I feel about it.
It's not like we're talking about some random story that appears out of the aether; it's a story from a cofounding journalist. Glen wanted this agreement between editors and journalists: editors will not censor the journalists they employ. The Intercept violated that.
To put it another way, what's more likely?: that Glenn Greenwald just suddenly decided he'd like to publish garbage articles, or that the Intercept is seeking to filter what content it publishes to achieve political aims?
Obviously it's up to each individual to make their own call on that, but to me, it's pretty obviously almost the latter.
Greenwald himself just confirmed on twitter he could publish with no editorial oversight. Eventually, his colleagues balked.
"A grown person throwing a tantrum", as the editor puts it, sounds about right.
> all that matters is that the story runs, not whether it's shown to be false months after the election is over
This mentality is authoritarian, anti-democratic, and anti-free speech. It implies that YOU, the editor, or whoever gets to decide for the rest of us what is worth knowing about or not. This is why non-partisan mainstream news is failing. The Internet has shown people the stories (true or not) that were being left out. I want raw information from the news not a carefully selected set of stories that follow a neat narrative.
While true, in relation to the stories about Russian collusion without any credible evidence, I think this criticism of editorial decisions is very, very one-sided. Especially considering publicly available evidence.
It is true that it might not be the right thing to publish, in context of current smears in politics not exceptional, aside maybe violation of privacy which also didn't get much focus as of late.
He also seem to have contractual rights to publish it, so the editors aren't responsible. The effectiveness of this censorship is a large concern aside from the story.
Is this the editor who wore down Snowden's patience with obstinate ignorance how to use encrypted emails despite being written tailored dummies guides, until Snowden wrote in the clear and ruined his life?
I'm not asking rhetorically I'm on my phone, and on the bus but this seems like it could lead to the incident, "I tried to teach GPG to Greenwald but I had the same problem Snowden had encountered when he reached out in December, that Greenwald was busy and couldn’t focus on it. " From : https://theintercept.com/2014/10/28/smuggling-snowden-secret...
I'd give him the benefit of the doubt over your incredibly arrogant assumption that he just wrote a 'garbage story' and is being legitimately dropped. WTF.
> That's not how this works. If the editor concludes that it's a garbage story dropped a few days before the election in an attempt to influence the election, you don't run it and then "let the readers decide who is right".
Why are you assuming the editors think it's garbage and aren't acting politically. The fact that greenwald just resigned from the org he founded, and the scathing reasons he gave, makes it pretty plausble it's about politics not journalistic standards.
In this thread I am seeing both "this story is already running non-stop on Fox, there's no censorship", and "if the editors didn't censor this, it would poison the election, and that's too big of a risk."
> That's not how this works. If the editor concludes that it's a garbage story dropped a few days before the election in an attempt to influence the election, you don't run it
He is/was one of the main editors of The Intercept. He is the second person listed on https://theintercept.com/about/. There is a wide media censorship on this story. If you think it's just this story, they are also squashing reports on the Philadelphia riots.
The problem is the selectivity with which the MSM acts. The MSM spent weeks pouring over Kavanaugh's yearbooks and attempting to ruin the lices of the Covington high school kids but they can't do some basic investigation on a story that has been corroborated multiple times?
This is a strawman. Greenwald didn't say that editing in general isn't ok. He didn't argue that all editorial disputes at all times must be resolved with critical articles alongside controversial ones. He suggested it as a solution here. It's not nonsense to suggest it, whether or not the editor accepts it.
Maybe they did see it the way you outlined: "garbage story dropped a few days before the election." He clearly sees it as censorship of an article that needs to be published. This is a resignation, so sure, the dispute was not resolved. Calling it a nonsense argument though, that takes a good squint.
Yes, when two people disagree, one side commonly thinks the other side's argument is nonsense. But, as you admit you don't know the truth of the story, it is impossible to tell whose side is right. Maybe the editors do just think it is garbage journalism. Or maybe the editors are just protecting "their guy".
It is when it's a media outlet you yourself founded and (according to Greenwald) the other editors were contractually obligated to publish what he'd written, uncensored.
Regardless of whether or not his article is good or bad, it seems like that is indeed how it should have worked.
Maybe ... if this was 1990. This is 2020, they know that their actions will cause a streisand effect. I don't think people are watching mainstream media narratives with bated breath , as most journalists think.
If the article contains the truth and is about some serious misconduct, wouldn't influencing the election be a good thing? This is the very role of journalism. It's important that the public makes a decision based on all the facts.
I can totally see his point with journalistic bias and the money strings. The ideal of independent press has long been dropped, and now we have news agencies of every political denomination. Sometimes it feels like objectivity isn't even a goal anymore.
I'm not a Trump supporter in any way. Still, I do want the truth to be known even if it's about a person I support.
In this case it may actually be how it works. When Glenn Greenwood co-founded The Intercept, he wrote some degree of editorial freedom into his contract.
"The final, precipitating cause is that The Intercept’s editors, in violation of my contractual right of editorial freedom, censored an article I wrote this week, refusing to publish it unless I remove all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, the candidate vehemently supported by all New-York-based Intercept editors involved in this effort at suppression."
> That's not how this works. If the editor concludes that it's a garbage story dropped a few days before the election in an attempt to influence the election
I doubt that a journalist of greenwald's caliber is going to write "garbage". I take your point about the editorial function in general but we can't lose sight of the context.
Objective journalism is dead. Glen Greenwald is not by any measure a Republican or a conservative, but he is a good objective journalist. It's a shame that a newspaper he co-founded will not print one of his stories because of their non-objective partisanship, but unfortunately this is all too common today.
[+] [-] dang|5 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24933054&p=2
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24933054&p=3
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24933054&p=4
[+] [-] gfodor|5 years ago|reply
Unfortunately, not only is engagement the wrong metric, but it's also one which incentivizes the undermining of the actual metric you need to be optimizing. This results in a negative feedback loop, and the logical outcome is that all media companies who focus on the engagement KPI will, in the limit, become tabloids - pure entertainment, no trust. Since most outlets were already on their way to becoming politics-focused, what we're going to get are "tabloids for politics" - and that is what we see. It's just a matter of when the public accepts this transition has occurred, not if it is happening.
Getting the public to accept this has proven challenging - despite the fact that many clearly see the "opposite side" media as tabloid-like, it's been hard for the same people to accept that their own chosen media sources, who tell them things they agree with, are no different in this regard. The resistance of course is due to all the usual human biases, but it's still strange when people can see it so obviously in the media they disagree with and not apply Occam's Razor to their own.
This does mean that there's a huge opportunity if you assume trust is something people will pay for. Substack seems to provide early evidence that this is the case. Fortunately, I think the market will correct this error - and it's critical it does, because a free press is essential to ensuring our society continues without increasing oppression or war.
[+] [-] blhack|5 years ago|reply
Journalists have essentially become socialites. They don't want to publish articles that will rock the boat, because the people they are friends with are the ones that own that boat, invite them to parties, and are a part of their friend groups.
The reporting around this story has been absolutely unbelievable to me. This story seems like the type of thing that would normally make peoples' entire journalistic career, and yet the journalists, the people who are supposed to be a part of our protection and sense-making system are actively trying to suppress it.
It's actually surreal to see this happening.
[+] [-] facet1ous|5 years ago|reply
I think he makes some good points and some dumb ones, but that's besides the point in all honesty - most of the article is him just complaining about the state of the media, making accusations of double-standards, and full of inflammatory language. There's little investigative journalism, no interviews with backing sources, no new facts laid out, just complaining about supposed wrong-doings and coverups. Some of which can be easily refuted.
Look I don't read The Intercept, but this is not newsroom material. I'm not journalist or have any kind of editing experience, but I wouldn't even run this in a school newspaper if I was put in charge. This is editorial material, pure and simple. The fact that he's complaining about censorship is eye-rolling.
I think it's pretty clear that most people here don't understand that the op-ed page and newsroom are different organizations, run by different people, and have different standards, even though they appear on the same newspaper. it's scary that these lines are being blurred more and more by the day.
But honestly, what's really probably going on is that Glenn Greenwald is tired of The Intercept and wants move full-time to his substack page. To do that he's bootstrapping his audience on his new site by manufacturing outrage. I would think most people should see through this...
[+] [-] CogentHedgehog|5 years ago|reply
I want to hear their side of it as well. My guess is that there's a lot more to this story. My guess is if all his peers thought the claims were not solid enough to publish, there is probably a reason for that -- not simply a desire to "censor" someone they've worked with for years.
Remember also that the NY Post writer behind the original "Hunter Biden laptop" story refused to put their name behind the article, probably due to the flaws in the claims and evidence presented.
[+] [-] reilly3000|5 years ago|reply
FYI this sob story has some precedent: In 2014: "I absolutely refuse to be exiled from my own country for the crime of doing journalism and I'm going to force the issue just on principle. And I think going back for a ceremony like the Polk Awards or other forms of journalistic awards would be a really good symbolic test of having to put the government in the position of having to arrest journalists who are coming back to the US to receive awards for the journalism they have done."
He wasn't arrested. He wasn't even menaced by authorities. The dude has a serious persecution complex.
[+] [-] mundo|5 years ago|reply
The elephant in the room (which Greenwald barely acknowledges in this essay) is that many mainstream news organizations have concluded that the evidence for this story was too weak to publish, and some believe it was fabricated by Russian intelligence. If Greenwald has evidence to the contrary, great, the world wants to see it, and (claims of "censorship" notwithstanding) he will have no trouble getting the word out. If all he has is salacious hearsay, it's hard to fault his former editors.
[+] [-] hiisukun|5 years ago|reply
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/article-on-joe-and-hunter-b...
And here is the content of emails with the editors, discussing the alleged censorship:
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/emails-with-intercept-edito...
[+] [-] gkoberger|5 years ago|reply
Sometimes it’s legitimate censorship. Other times, your editor is just insisting you don’t spread misinformation.
[+] [-] subtypefiddler|5 years ago|reply
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/29/business/glenn-greenwald-...
[+] [-] burlesona|5 years ago|reply
Does anyone else feel this way?
[+] [-] fareesh|5 years ago|reply
This narrative has been seen a lot, and often times it is invoked as the default narrative whenever things are being claimed in a particular political direction.
I would like to question this at a fundamental level. At what point does the information itself become pertinent? Shouldn't the information itself, if true, always be the focus of the story? If the information is unverified, shouldn't there be some attempt to verify it? If it cannot be verified - then it's probably best to dismiss it, but if people involved in the situation start coming forward to verify the context of the information, shouldn't it merit further investigation?
There is this guy - Tony Bobulinski. He's a navy veteran from a family of veterans and he's pretty much coming forward to say that the emails are all true. In his absence, it's ambiguous, but now that's come forward, why is there still hesitation to take this story seriously?
Frankly I find it difficult to believe that there is no coordinated media attempt to silence this story because at a personal level many of them want to cover up anything that makes one candidate look bad.
[+] [-] cblconfederate|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dkarl|5 years ago|reply
Reading the emails, his editor sounds pretty reasonable. And I think it's ironic that a journalist would cite ethics as his reason for being so hell-bent on publishing an article that does nothing but repeat and amplify unsubstantiated suspicions about a candidate a few days before the election. Greenwald's point-by-point attempt at rebutting his editor supports the editor's perspective, in my opinion. He describes the lack of evidence in a way that conspiratorially suggests that the evidence exists, and his takedown of the bigger media outlets consists of noting that they investigated and ran articles that failed to produce any damning evidence... which is exactly what his article would do, except his article would frame the lack of evidence as evidence of a bigger conspiracy.
I think his faith that there's a story there is exactly what you need in an investigative journalist, and I think stopping him from publishing anyway when he doesn't find it is exactly what he needs in an editor.
[0] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/emails-with-intercept-edito...
[+] [-] tpmx|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilikehurdles|5 years ago|reply
Frankly, if you read his original piece, it's exhaustingly shoddy. To say he needs an editor is putting it lightly.
[+] [-] nightowl_games|5 years ago|reply
Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi are my only two journalists I really seek out and follow. Glenn especially.
I was of the belief that The Intercept was a valid source solely because of Glenn.
I believe Glenn. I will follow Glenn.
[+] [-] LinuxBender|5 years ago|reply
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0rcLsoIKgA
[+] [-] bachmeier|5 years ago|reply
That's not how this works. If the editor concludes that it's a garbage story dropped a few days before the election in an attempt to influence the election, you don't run it and then "let the readers decide who is right". As he well knows, all that matters is that the story runs, not whether it's shown to be false months after the election is over. Strange that he thinks his readers are that gullible.
I want to be clear that I'm not claiming to know the truth as it relates to this story, only that this is the position of the editors, and that his argument is nonsense.
[+] [-] karl11|5 years ago|reply
However, Greenwald's argument definitely should be how it works if a media organization cares about truth and open debate. In this case, it seems very hard to believe that a story -- written by a credible journalist, with a long track record, who literally founded the organization -- was garbage.
I think Glenn hoped to create a media entity that regarded truth as the measure of merit of a story vs. how well it promoted a cause and ads/subscriptions. Now that the experiment has failed so obviously, good for him for moving on.
[+] [-] sandwichest|5 years ago|reply
This is bordering on hyperbole.
1. Glenn Greenwald isn't one to produce a "Garbage Story," he's a credible journalist with a long history of dropping bombshells. He's dropped bombshells about both the right AND the left. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Greenwald#Awards
2. It's the job of the media to do exactly what you have alluded to within the last half of the statement above. All sides do just that every single election I've been alive, all the way up to election day. But this time, only one side is allowed to do it.
3. Glenn Greenwald is a co-founder of The Intercept and is provided contractual rights to editorial freedom.
The fact that this comment is the top comment on this thread is extremely worrying. This is censorship, nothing less.
*edit: removed hints of rudeness.
[+] [-] dragonwriter|5 years ago|reply
On the other hand, if Greenwald actually does have, or believe he has, a contract which guarantees him immunity to outside editing as he seems to claim ("The Intercept’s editors, in violation of my contractual right of editorial freedom, censored an article I wrote this week") -- which seems somewhat implausible as presented, but that's the story presented -- then the offer he presents also makes sense as what amounts to an attempt to essential settle the dispute over rights and obligations out of court with a compromise which arguably could be better for both his journalistic interests and the Intercept's financial interests than a public, after-the-fact breach of contract dispute in the courts.
[+] [-] 1980phipsi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nimbius|5 years ago|reply
Occhams razor:
Glen Greenwald is one of the most respected journalists on the planet. the man is a modern day Cronkite. his character is beyond the pale when it comes to accurate journalism so it begs the question: What is Glen reporting that an editor finds so 'garbage' as to risk their entire future career on censoring this man?
[+] [-] StavrosK|5 years ago|reply
Your argument seems to be based on an assumption that the story was garbage, with the evidence being that the editor pulled it, which begs the question.
[+] [-] vanattab|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gameswithgo|5 years ago|reply
I am personally torn on this kind of philosophy. Would that everyone was like this, but since they are not, surely there are times when too much is on the line to behave this way?
He explicitly talks about this attitude in this interview: https://www.vox.com/2016/9/15/12853236/glenn-greenwald-trump...
But it is a bit weird that here we are again, on the cusp of another trump presidency, and Greenwald swoops in to Trump's aid, again. Not sure how I feel about it.
[+] [-] dilap|5 years ago|reply
To put it another way, what's more likely?: that Glenn Greenwald just suddenly decided he'd like to publish garbage articles, or that the Intercept is seeking to filter what content it publishes to achieve political aims?
Obviously it's up to each individual to make their own call on that, but to me, it's pretty obviously almost the latter.
[+] [-] pvg|5 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/ErikWemple/status/1321896097099489283
Greenwald himself just confirmed on twitter he could publish with no editorial oversight. Eventually, his colleagues balked. "A grown person throwing a tantrum", as the editor puts it, sounds about right.
[+] [-] macinjosh|5 years ago|reply
This mentality is authoritarian, anti-democratic, and anti-free speech. It implies that YOU, the editor, or whoever gets to decide for the rest of us what is worth knowing about or not. This is why non-partisan mainstream news is failing. The Internet has shown people the stories (true or not) that were being left out. I want raw information from the news not a carefully selected set of stories that follow a neat narrative.
[+] [-] raxxorrax|5 years ago|reply
It is true that it might not be the right thing to publish, in context of current smears in politics not exceptional, aside maybe violation of privacy which also didn't get much focus as of late.
He also seem to have contractual rights to publish it, so the editors aren't responsible. The effectiveness of this censorship is a large concern aside from the story.
[+] [-] Cullinet|5 years ago|reply
I'm not asking rhetorically I'm on my phone, and on the bus but this seems like it could lead to the incident, "I tried to teach GPG to Greenwald but I had the same problem Snowden had encountered when he reached out in December, that Greenwald was busy and couldn’t focus on it. " From : https://theintercept.com/2014/10/28/smuggling-snowden-secret...
[+] [-] lubesGordi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _pmf_|5 years ago|reply
Except if it's about Bad Orange Man, right?
[+] [-] not_a_moth|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vr46|5 years ago|reply
https://theintercept.com/2020/10/29/glenn-greenwald-resigns-...
[+] [-] haberman|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] collegecamp293|5 years ago|reply
He is/was one of the main editors of The Intercept. He is the second person listed on https://theintercept.com/about/. There is a wide media censorship on this story. If you think it's just this story, they are also squashing reports on the Philadelphia riots.
[+] [-] kolanos|5 years ago|reply
> I want to be clear that I'm not claiming to know the truth as it relates to this story...
Make up your mind.
[+] [-] mathnovice|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kyleblarson|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dalbasal|5 years ago|reply
This is a strawman. Greenwald didn't say that editing in general isn't ok. He didn't argue that all editorial disputes at all times must be resolved with critical articles alongside controversial ones. He suggested it as a solution here. It's not nonsense to suggest it, whether or not the editor accepts it.
Maybe they did see it the way you outlined: "garbage story dropped a few days before the election." He clearly sees it as censorship of an article that needs to be published. This is a resignation, so sure, the dispute was not resolved. Calling it a nonsense argument though, that takes a good squint.
[+] [-] oh_sigh|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kelnos|5 years ago|reply
It is when it's a media outlet you yourself founded and (according to Greenwald) the other editors were contractually obligated to publish what he'd written, uncensored.
Regardless of whether or not his article is good or bad, it seems like that is indeed how it should have worked.
[+] [-] cblconfederate|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rllearneratwork|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GekkePrutser|5 years ago|reply
I can totally see his point with journalistic bias and the money strings. The ideal of independent press has long been dropped, and now we have news agencies of every political denomination. Sometimes it feels like objectivity isn't even a goal anymore.
I'm not a Trump supporter in any way. Still, I do want the truth to be known even if it's about a person I support.
[+] [-] cmiles74|5 years ago|reply
"The final, precipitating cause is that The Intercept’s editors, in violation of my contractual right of editorial freedom, censored an article I wrote this week, refusing to publish it unless I remove all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, the candidate vehemently supported by all New-York-based Intercept editors involved in this effort at suppression."
[+] [-] jeegsy|5 years ago|reply
I doubt that a journalist of greenwald's caliber is going to write "garbage". I take your point about the editorial function in general but we can't lose sight of the context.
[+] [-] anonymousiam|5 years ago|reply