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"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 perspectiv

"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.

_pmf_ 6y ago
> 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". Except if it's about Bad Orange Man, right?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
loceng 6y ago
I'd like to see all of the critical statements and related content of Joe Biden that he wanted to include.
- ncal 6y ago
  here's the article: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/article-on-joe-and-hunter-biden-censored https://greenwald.substack.com/p/article-on-joe-and-hunter-b...
1980phipsi 6y ago
I would withhold any opinion that it is a "garbage story" until actually reading it...
- dylan604 6y ago
  I read that "garbage story" was meant as the decision of the editors who would have just finished reading the story to decide if the story was worthy to run and not the poster's personal labeling of the story.
- ivalm 6y ago
  It is about emails which have no headers, that are impossible to verify, that were “known to fbi” for a long time but didn’t produce any action (because likely fake), and that are specifically being pushed to change outcome of election despite, again, no real evidence of their veracity.
  - starkd 6y ago
    Those issues could be addressed in the article. In open debate. That's the way the first amendment works. There are reasons to not think its purely garbage storage, as many have pointed out. Not to mention a business partner, and someone who was sentenced to jail who has released their gmail account to the public.
    - thrill 6y ago
      The first amendment has nothing to do with activities outside Congress making laws.
      - watermelonhead 6y ago
        Lol, hiding under this rubbish argument to censor everything that you dont like. Incredible
      - starkd 6y ago
        huh? it's an inalienable right of us all. It either applies to all of us or it is meaningless.
        throwaway2048 6y ago
mlthoughts2018 6y ago
Exactly. This looks much more like Greenwald trying to capitalize on hype. The entire spectrum of details around the Biden emails has been roundly debunked and there is tons of evidence to suggest it’s illegitimately sourced by agents directly directed by Trump, from sources with active incentives to try to damage Biden. It is responsible to decline to run this story. It only serves to feed conspiracy theories and drive disinformation opportunities right at the time of an election. I am really disappointed with Greenwald here.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  > Exactly. This looks much more like Greenwald trying to capitalize on hype. The entire spectrum of details around the Biden emails has been roundly debunked Oh please. Let's try to keep the "post-truth" ethos on the Right, rather than adopting it ourselves, mmkay?
  - kev_da_dev 6y ago
    You are far too late on this one, sir. It's been thoroughly adopted by both sides of the aisle.
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      Most of those adopting it on the "Democrat" side of the aisle, I wouldn't call on the Left.
  - jtbayly 6y ago
    Is it your presumption that only people not "on the Right" are allowed on HN?
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      My presumption is that someone on the Right would not be making these specific misleading claims. Don't worry, I am well aware that there are quite a few right-wingers here.
macspoofing 6y ago
>If the editor concludes that it's a garbage story dropped a few days before the election in an attempt to influence the election Nobody disputes why this story was dropped at the time it was dropped. It's a common tactic that has been practiced for decades by political campaigns and even media outlets. Heck, there is a reason why the Kavanaugh story broke when it did. There is a reason why the NY Times published Trump taxes when they did. What's different is that all of center-left/left news establishment decided that they are going to get Biden elected and protect him from any negative news.
- addicted 6y ago
  Except it wasn’t news.
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    It isn't news that the son of a presidential candidate is and has been using his name to enrich himself, raising AT BEST questions about conflict of interest? Are you for real?
    - ping_pong 6y ago
      To me, it's the fact that Joe Biden didn't put a stop to this immediately. Regardless of the emails, Hunter Biden is/was a drug addict with no skills, being paid upwards of $50,000/month to be on a Board of Directors of a known corrupt company. What skill does he possess that is worth $600,000? The only thing that makes sense is his connection to Joe Biden. It's obvious they were paying him money to be on the board because of his connection to Joe Biden, and Joe Biden should have put a stop to it. That's the crux of the issue to me. The fact that the media is forming a wall of silence around this issue really does show the vast biases they have. This doesn't mean Trump isn't corrupt, by the way, which he is and I believe he is unfit to be president and nothing about the laptop or these emails stopped me from voting for Biden. But every tiny issue with Trump is magnified and overanalyzed by the media, but this rather big issue on Biden is swept under the rug. The media is just as corrupt and biased but the only losers are we the people.
StavrosK 6y ago
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.
- ivalm 6y ago
  This story is specifically being released now to influence the election. Presumably the people who got the email had it for a year, they could have released it earlier. The fact that these emails have no headers and are impossible to verify strengthens the possibility that this is literal disinformation aimed to affect the election. There are things that are legitimately news now (as in were discovered recently, are now published), this isn’t it.
  - nostromo 6y ago
    I seriously doubt if it was Don Jr in question and not Hunter Biden the media would be so restrained.
    - ivalm 6y ago
      So maybe MSM would act poorly in that case, and? That’s not justification for acting poorly now.
      - nostromo 6y ago
        It would be an improvement if it'd at least be a level playing field with a consistent set of rules. Being principled only when it suits your favored cause isn't being principled at all.
        themacguffinman 6y ago
        Neither is criticizing the media for a hypothetical scenario that didn't happen.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> 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.
- xnyan 6y ago
  all true, but in the end if you are an editor and you think the source is garbage, you can’t publish it. That’s your duty regardless of anything else.
- shalmanese 6y ago
  A right is only useful if you assert that right. If you look at the email chain that Glenn himself published [1], the correspondence is essentially the editor giving a bunch of suggestions of how to improve the article, then Glenn asserting CENSORSHIP and then the EIC telling him to stop being so rude to his colleagues and then Glenn quitting in a huff. Maybe it's possible that all of the implied messages were exactly as Glenn surmised them to be but ultimately, it doesn't matter what's implied. Glenn at no point even brings up what his supposed contractual rights are and lays out a paper trail forcing them to acknowledge a breach of contract. It's entirely possible that if he had just pushed a little harder, they would have simply been like "Well, it's your grave but it does state it in the contract so we'll put it up without edits" but him not even trying makes it seem like he is engineering the situation to resolve to this particular outcome. [1] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/emails-with-intercept-editors-showing https://greenwald.substack.com/p/emails-with-intercept-edito...
  - 6y ago
nimbius 6y ago
>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?
- epistasis 6y ago
  After the past few years, I do not share that assessment of Greenwald in the least. Following him on Twitter for a while caused the scales to fall from my eyes. I think he's done some good things in the past, but currently he seems off his rocker, honesty. People can change as they age, and I think he clearly has.
  - kaesar14 6y ago
    Can you elaborate?
    - SamBam 6y ago
      He has stuck by his claim -- despite the findings of numerous national and international intelligence community investigations and even a Republican senate investigations -- that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 election. And despite his founding of the Intercept in part to investigate abuses by people in power (and his constant criticism that the press never publishes negative articles about people on their side) he has never written a single article critical of any of the abuses of power by the Trump administration. Not a single article critical of anything Trump has done in the past four years. [1] 1. All articles: https://muckrack.com/ggreenwald/articles https://muckrack.com/ggreenwald/articles
      - skindoe 6y ago
        Define "interfere" what specifically did Russia do and how did that quantitatively effect the election results. I'm willing to put serious money down that the vast majority of people like yourself can't answer that question without linking to an op ed piece. Come on people we're engineers think about it... Ask yourself why that is.
karl11 6y ago
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.
- jpadkins 6y ago
  > simply how many ads and subscriptions the stories can sell. I don't think this is actually right. I think owners of news media companies want influence more than profit. I don't think Bezos is buying news media for the profits... The influence helps for their other goals.
  - jrs235 6y ago
    >helps for their other goals To profit?
    - luckylion 6y ago
      Power. You can profit from power, but you could also genuinely believe that the world will be a better place if only everyone did what you said. In both cases you need power.
  - sbilstein 6y ago
    Techies, thanks to a bunch of dumb twitter talking heads, seem to think journalists are just rolling in bundles of cash from clicks. They're not. The vast majority of them, even the ones with upwards of 20k twitter followers, barely make any money. Influence is definitely more important to them than cash.
gameswithgo 6y ago
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? He explicitly talks about this attitude in this interview: https://www.vox.com/2016/9/15/12853236/glenn-greenwald-trump-clinton 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.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  This is where the distinction between "act" and "rule" consequentialism becomes important. Perhaps there is "too much" on the line, but I think that we live in a complex world, it is difficult to estimate the downstream impacts of your action, and that every time you choose to suppress a story due to potential political consequences, you are undermining broader "trust." Better to default to reporting freely since, as a rule, suppressing stories generally erodes trust, whereas the direct downstream impact of airing a specific story can be difficult to estimate in a complex world.
  - garden_hermit 6y ago
    Both both blocking and running a story are conscious actions with political consequences and which have the potential to undermine trust. Plenty of people lost trust in the media following their focus on the Hillary Clinton email scandal, which amounted to nothing but likely swayed the election. There seems to be some sort of paradox of tolerance to trust and the news media. In principle, we should allow all information. However, bad faith actors can easily take advantage of this principle, and flood the airwaves with dubious and ultimately-overblown stories (see Clinton's emails). If bad-faith actors are afoot (which seems the case here), then at some point an editor needs to step in and refuse to print the story—the question though, is when? And is there anyway to step in, and have it not look like censorship?
oh_sigh 6y ago
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".
- confidantlake 6y ago
  It isn't impossible to tell who is right or we would never know anything. Maybe Ted Cruz's dad assassinated JFK or maybe he didn't. Who knows, both sides say the other side is nonsense.
  - oh_sigh 6y ago
    I never made the argument that is generally impossible to tell who is right.
vanattab 6y ago
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?
- starkd 6y ago
  And Biden could/should have addressed this issue. Before he got the nomination, a number of outfits - Politico, Bloomberg - were running stories about his deals. Back when they wanted someone different nominated. You thnk the democrats would have learned not to nominate another clinton.
rllearneratwork 6y ago
his track record is good enough proof for any editor to know that story is NOT a garbage. I guess this is WHY they actually censored it.
- lordnacho 6y ago
  You can't just waive it through on the strength of his reputation, you have to check the sources.
  - rllearneratwork 6y ago
    you have to apply the same standard to other stories then. If you wait until everything is 100% verified you'll publish nothing
meowface 6y ago
You're assuming it's a garbage story and that it's intended to influence the election based on absolutely nothing. Why not make counter-arguments to the actual piece, when it comes out? I'd argue that all of the rampant censorship about any conceivable questioning or criticism of Biden is the thing that history is likely going to look back on in a few months, and perhaps years, as unethical and irresponsible journalistic conduct. I disagree with some of Greenwald's stances, but he and Matt Taibbi seem to be the only actual journalists left in the country, that I'm aware of. It's mind-boggling. I strongly dislike Trump as president and as a person, I think he's probably the worst president we've had from a domestic perspective, and I couldn't disagree more with him and his party's agenda, but as of the past few days I almost want to see him win due to all of this recent censorship tipping the scales. Almost like an Oedipus-style prophecy ironically fulfilled by the attempt to prevent it. I don't actually want him to win, but I want these people to have this blow up in their face. The cover-up is probably a lot worse than the allegations (which don't seem that damaging, going by the leaked emails, but I'm curious to see Greenwald's analysis), and I bet this is turning many more people further from media outlets and closer to Trump or at least further from the left. Even if he loses the election, I think the past few weeks have shown he might have already won. Not due to anything he did, but solely due to an entirely avoidable shooting of oneself in the foot. This could have ripple effects that last longer than the next 4 years.
- dkural 6y ago
  You're already buying into the propaganda - there is nothing to "cover-up" per se, there can't be a cover-up, because there is nothing to cover up, there is no story. Imagine multiple media outlets simultaneously get an email saying "Meowface denies being Dogface during the night". If someone refuses to print this, due lack of evidence and lack of truth - that is not called a cover-up. There is no reason to dignify it with airtime in the first place. After all one can publish this sort of stuff on blogs, internet forums, tabloids etc. Curation is the true news product - sifting of truth from untruth is one way to do it.
  - meowface 6y ago
    I may very well turn out to be wrong, but I think the emails are more likely than not all real. But even if they all turn out to be completely doctored, there's a much more responsible way of handling the information. Of course it'd be absurd to assume the emails are real, but it's almost as absurd to assume they can't be real and that to even attempt to objectively assess the claim is falling for propaganda. This is a true Shiri's scissor, here. The left-leaning journalists who recognize, in my opinion, how ridiculous this behavior is vs. the rest are basically living on different planets.
haberman 6y ago
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."
- happytoexplain 6y ago
  Ignoring the mischaracterization of the two points, what are you trying to say? That those two thoughts are not allowed to exist in the same "group" of people, for some definition of "group"?
  - haberman 6y ago
    The rationale for censorship of Greenwald's article is unconvincing, as that rationale is contradicted even by other people who agree with the censorship. As the story is already running elsewhere, it is unconvincing that there is a pressing need for this particular outlet to suppress it.
    - bikezen 6y ago
      If other outlets want to put their reputations on the line for something you can't vet, do you want to jump into the mud with them? The intercept decided no, seems pretty simple.
    - mjlawson 6y ago
      That isn't the rationale that the editors used to make copy suggestions - that's the rationale that Greenwald is projecting onto them. I suggest reading the email thread he posted on his blog - it does not make him look very good.
- disown 6y ago
  Not only do they justify censorship, there is a suspicious amount of comments trying to minimize or delegitimize greenwald in a sneaky boilerplate response: "I used to think he was a good journalist", "I used to respect his journalism 5 years ago", etc. And of course trying to tie greenwald to russia. The exact same thing you see on assange related post. The sad thing is a lot of these commenters are journalists or work in the news industry. Sad thing to see. Not to mention the downvote brigading.
otikik 6y ago
"Letting readers decide who is right" is always good thing. But they rarely do that. Most take the spicy title (or out-of-context incorrect quote from Twitter) which reaffirms their opinion and run with it. They share, like and subscribe. And the article keeps being shared, liked and subscribed for months, even if it was disproven minutes after it was published. So instead of being a way to find the truth the article ends up being a way to validate missinformation. I don't know what the solution to this problem is. Just wanted to point out that "letting them decide" has a lot of problems.
macinjosh 6y ago
> 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.
- confidantlake 6y ago
  Investigating whether a story is true or not is a fundamental part of journalism. Not publishing stories about Bat Boy found with Elvis in Atlantas is a good thing.
collegecamp293 6y ago
> 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/ 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.
- rat87 6y ago
  And all? most? of his colleagues with fairly similar political views and a dedication to good journalism are opposed. Glenn seems to have picked his personal grudge over journalistic integrity
amadeuspagel 6y ago
That's apparently how it was supposed to work at the intercept, according to his contract. Strange that he thinks his readers ... are actually going to read the article?
Cullinet 6y ago
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-secrets/ https://theintercept.com/2014/10/28/smuggling-snowden-secret...
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  I believe that you are talking about Assange and the GPG key, right? I believe that that was a former Guardian journalist, not Greenwald.
dilap 6y ago
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.
kyleblarson 6y ago
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?
mathnovice 6y ago
I'm going to trust Glenn Greenwald's knowledge of journalistic ethics over yours.
- edmundsauto 6y ago
  What about the editors' opinions? They have a better perspective than anyone.
lanevorockz 6y ago
lol ... The editor though that the truth is less important than the election. It's the same as what happened in Social Media. Sadly, it means they can never be trusted ever again.
richardARPANET 6y ago
You're clearly brainwashed.
jeegsy 6y ago
> 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.
lubesGordi 6y ago
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.
pvg 6y ago
The Intercept's editor-in-chief has put out a statement of their own. https://twitter.com/ErikWemple/status/1321896097099489283 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.
- RonanTheGrey 6y ago
  That statement reads, to me, as unprofessional and petulant. What kind of editor makes a personal attack on a former colleague in a public setting in the name of a journalistic organization? It simply drives home to me the idea that it was the editors, not Greenwald, who are being petty dictators. I guess how this whole debacle is received will probably depend on one's life experience.
  - pvg 6y ago
    Greenwald called them pathological, censorious, illiberal and equates editorial oversight with censorship. It's hardly petulant and unprofessional to suggest, in response, that he's behaving like a grown-ass dude throwing a tantrum. He's also just published their recent correspondence. It doesn't make him look great either: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/emails-with-intercept-editors-showing https://greenwald.substack.com/p/emails-with-intercept-edito...
    - dvtrn 6y ago
      What is the difference between a “grown-ass dude throwing a tantrum” and a “grown-ass dude vociferously disagreeing with the ethics of his former employer”? I’m not asking to make a point or take a side in this via a pretense of Socratic method, I’m asking to try understanding the motivations and intentions of how Greenwald is being depicted in terms of ‘throwing tantrums’ as a non-journalist fan of journalism.
      - pvg 6y ago
        I think that one's pretty straightforward. 'I completely disagree with your editorial direction' is disagreeing with your employer. 'Your editing is censorship and suppression of truths only I have gleaned' is throwing a tantrum. I guess it I have a hard time understanding how one can read all of the presented material and come away with the impression Glenn Greenwald is the misrepresented party in some vigorous but rational and fact-based discussion.
kolanos 6y ago
> ...garbage story... > I want to be clear that I'm not claiming to know the truth as it relates to this story... Make up your mind.
- glaring 6y ago
  You are trying to frame these two quotes as being contradictory by leaving out the words preceding the first quote. Why would you do that? It should read: "If the editor concludes that it's a garbage story..." Looks like including the entire sentence makes it pretty clear that this isn't a self-contradicting position to take.
  - acituan 6y ago
    Except the GPs initial framing was not honest to begin with: editors' dismissal is not based on the story being garbage; details of this dismissal is contested and exactly the issue under discussion here. If GP couldn't resist a low effort editorializing of this dismissal reason, they don't get to claim neutrality or agnosticism two sentences later. Besides, the rest of their post clearly indicates they do think the story is garbage. It looks as if they are giving a spin of legitimacy to that angle as if that was also what editors thought.
ffggvv 6y ago
lol thank god we have censors like you to determine what articles the greatest, most impactful journalist of our lifetimes can publish. how would we he know whats newsworthy otherwise.
cblconfederate 6y ago
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.
GekkePrutser 6y ago
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.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  If. But if the article contains some outright falsehoods about serious misconduct, and it still influences the election, is that a good thing? Mind you, I'm not clearly on the "don't publish" side. But that position is not clearly wrong.
ChuckMcM 6y ago
I was coming here to say the same. When you have all of the intelligence agencies you trust saying "Hey there are nation-state actors who are actively trying to sow dis-information in order to affect the outcome of the US elections." as an editor your only response can be "We are going to be really really choosy about stories we publish with respect to either candidate prior to the election." Maybe it is a big scoop and all legit, and maybe it will like the "Hunter files" that Fox News was touting and have now mysteriously vanished. The responsible thing to do is publish after the election. What ever the story talks about will still be true or untrue then, and the risk of it being an elaborate hoax are non-zero. Nobody wants to be the person who was "duped by a foreign intelligence service into helping them move the election their way." That is not a badge of honor.
vr46 6y ago
The response from The Intercept: https://theintercept.com/2020/10/29/glenn-greenwald-resigns-the-intercept/ https://theintercept.com/2020/10/29/glenn-greenwald-resigns-...
sandwichest 6y ago
> "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 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.
- Nacdor 6y ago
  The most shocking part of this whole fiasco is the way The Intercept's editors blatantly play favorites, allowing disinformation that helps Biden while censoring a legitimate story that hurts him: > 4) Finally, I have to note what I find to be the incredible irony that The Intercept -- which has published more articles than I can count that contain factually dubious claims if not outright falsehoods that are designed to undermine Trump's candidacy or protect Joe Biden -- is now telling me, someone who has never had an article retracted or even seriously corrected in 15 years, that my journalism doesn't meet the editorial requirements to be published at the Intercept. > It was The Intercept that took the lead in falsely claiming that publication by the NY Post was part of a campaign of "Russian disinformation" -- and did so by (a) uncritically citing the allegations of ex-CIA officials as truth, and (b) so much worse: omitting the sentence in the letter from the ex-CIA officials admitting they had no evidence for that claim. In other words, the Intercept -- in the only article that it bothered to publish that makes passing reference to these documents -- did so only by mindlessly repeating what CIA operatives say. And it turned out to be completely false. This -- CIA stenography -- is what meets the Intercept's rigorous editorial standards: > "The U.S. intelligence community had previously warned the White House that Giuliani has been the target of a Russian intelligence operation to disseminate disinformation about Biden, and the FBI has been investigating whether the strange story about the Biden laptop is part of a Russian disinformation campaign. This week, a group of former intelligence officials issued a letter saying that the Giuliani laptop story has the classic trademarks of Russian disinformation." > The Intercept deleted from that quotation of the CIA's claims this rather significant statement: "we do not have evidence of Russian involvement." > Repeatedly over the past several months, I've brought to Betsy's attention false claims that were published by The Intercept in articles that were designed to protect Biden and malign Trump. Some have been corrected or quietly deleted, while others were just left standing. https://greenwald.substack.com/p/emails-with-intercept-editors-showing https://greenwald.substack.com/p/emails-with-intercept-edito...
temp8964 6y ago
If the "golden showers" is not a garbage story, I don't know what is.
raxxorrax 6y ago
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.
not_a_moth 6y ago
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.
cmiles74 6y ago
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."
jojobas 6y ago
He was an editor with contractually guaranteed editorial freedom.
kelnos 6y ago
> That's not how this works. 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.
warlord1 6y ago
Why is it a garbage story? Would it be a garbage story if the photos/sex vids were Trump's? The mainstream media wouldn't call it a "garbage story" they'd call it some kitchsy bullshit thing like "crisis of democracy" or "bombshell"... You get the idea. You're assuming the quality of the journalism in direct contradiction to the images/videos/SMS that's already in the wild.
dalbasal 6y ago
That's their position, but he has is his. 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.

_pmf_ 6y ago

> 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". Except if it's about Bad Orange Man, right?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

loceng 6y ago

I'd like to see all of the critical statements and related content of Joe Biden that he wanted to include.

ncal 6y ago
here's the article: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/article-on-joe-and-hunter-biden-censored https://greenwald.substack.com/p/article-on-joe-and-hunter-b...

1980phipsi 6y ago

I would withhold any opinion that it is a "garbage story" until actually reading it...

dylan604 6y ago
I read that "garbage story" was meant as the decision of the editors who would have just finished reading the story to decide if the story was worthy to run and not the poster's personal labeling of the story.
ivalm 6y ago
It is about emails which have no headers, that are impossible to verify, that were “known to fbi” for a long time but didn’t produce any action (because likely fake), and that are specifically being pushed to change outcome of election despite, again, no real evidence of their veracity.
- starkd 6y ago
  Those issues could be addressed in the article. In open debate. That's the way the first amendment works. There are reasons to not think its purely garbage storage, as many have pointed out. Not to mention a business partner, and someone who was sentenced to jail who has released their gmail account to the public.
  - thrill 6y ago
    The first amendment has nothing to do with activities outside Congress making laws.
    - watermelonhead 6y ago
      Lol, hiding under this rubbish argument to censor everything that you dont like. Incredible
    - starkd 6y ago
      huh? it's an inalienable right of us all. It either applies to all of us or it is meaningless.
      - throwaway2048 6y ago

mlthoughts2018 6y ago

Exactly. This looks much more like Greenwald trying to capitalize on hype. The entire spectrum of details around the Biden emails has been roundly debunked and there is tons of evidence to suggest it’s illegitimately sourced by agents directly directed by Trump, from sources with active incentives to try to damage Biden. It is responsible to decline to run this story. It only serves to feed conspiracy theories and drive disinformation opportunities right at the time of an election. I am really disappointed with Greenwald here.

whimsicalism 6y ago
> Exactly. This looks much more like Greenwald trying to capitalize on hype. The entire spectrum of details around the Biden emails has been roundly debunked Oh please. Let's try to keep the "post-truth" ethos on the Right, rather than adopting it ourselves, mmkay?
- kev_da_dev 6y ago
  You are far too late on this one, sir. It's been thoroughly adopted by both sides of the aisle.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    Most of those adopting it on the "Democrat" side of the aisle, I wouldn't call on the Left.
- jtbayly 6y ago
  Is it your presumption that only people not "on the Right" are allowed on HN?
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    My presumption is that someone on the Right would not be making these specific misleading claims. Don't worry, I am well aware that there are quite a few right-wingers here.

macspoofing 6y ago

>If the editor concludes that it's a garbage story dropped a few days before the election in an attempt to influence the election Nobody disputes why this story was dropped at the time it was dropped. It's a common tactic that has been practiced for decades by political campaigns and even media outlets. Heck, there is a reason why the Kavanaugh story broke when it did. There is a reason why the NY Times published Trump taxes when they did. What's different is that all of center-left/left news establishment decided that they are going to get Biden elected and protect him from any negative news.

addicted 6y ago
Except it wasn’t news.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  It isn't news that the son of a presidential candidate is and has been using his name to enrich himself, raising AT BEST questions about conflict of interest? Are you for real?
  - ping_pong 6y ago
    To me, it's the fact that Joe Biden didn't put a stop to this immediately. Regardless of the emails, Hunter Biden is/was a drug addict with no skills, being paid upwards of $50,000/month to be on a Board of Directors of a known corrupt company. What skill does he possess that is worth $600,000? The only thing that makes sense is his connection to Joe Biden. It's obvious they were paying him money to be on the board because of his connection to Joe Biden, and Joe Biden should have put a stop to it. That's the crux of the issue to me. The fact that the media is forming a wall of silence around this issue really does show the vast biases they have. This doesn't mean Trump isn't corrupt, by the way, which he is and I believe he is unfit to be president and nothing about the laptop or these emails stopped me from voting for Biden. But every tiny issue with Trump is magnified and overanalyzed by the media, but this rather big issue on Biden is swept under the rug. The media is just as corrupt and biased but the only losers are we the people.

StavrosK 6y ago

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.

ivalm 6y ago
This story is specifically being released now to influence the election. Presumably the people who got the email had it for a year, they could have released it earlier. The fact that these emails have no headers and are impossible to verify strengthens the possibility that this is literal disinformation aimed to affect the election. There are things that are legitimately news now (as in were discovered recently, are now published), this isn’t it.
- nostromo 6y ago
  I seriously doubt if it was Don Jr in question and not Hunter Biden the media would be so restrained.
  - ivalm 6y ago
    So maybe MSM would act poorly in that case, and? That’s not justification for acting poorly now.
    - nostromo 6y ago
      It would be an improvement if it'd at least be a level playing field with a consistent set of rules. Being principled only when it suits your favored cause isn't being principled at all.
      - themacguffinman 6y ago
        Neither is criticizing the media for a hypothetical scenario that didn't happen.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> 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.

xnyan 6y ago
all true, but in the end if you are an editor and you think the source is garbage, you can’t publish it. That’s your duty regardless of anything else.
shalmanese 6y ago
A right is only useful if you assert that right. If you look at the email chain that Glenn himself published [1], the correspondence is essentially the editor giving a bunch of suggestions of how to improve the article, then Glenn asserting CENSORSHIP and then the EIC telling him to stop being so rude to his colleagues and then Glenn quitting in a huff. Maybe it's possible that all of the implied messages were exactly as Glenn surmised them to be but ultimately, it doesn't matter what's implied. Glenn at no point even brings up what his supposed contractual rights are and lays out a paper trail forcing them to acknowledge a breach of contract. It's entirely possible that if he had just pushed a little harder, they would have simply been like "Well, it's your grave but it does state it in the contract so we'll put it up without edits" but him not even trying makes it seem like he is engineering the situation to resolve to this particular outcome. [1] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/emails-with-intercept-editors-showing https://greenwald.substack.com/p/emails-with-intercept-edito...
- 6y ago

nimbius 6y ago

>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?

epistasis 6y ago
After the past few years, I do not share that assessment of Greenwald in the least. Following him on Twitter for a while caused the scales to fall from my eyes. I think he's done some good things in the past, but currently he seems off his rocker, honesty. People can change as they age, and I think he clearly has.
- kaesar14 6y ago
  Can you elaborate?
  - SamBam 6y ago
    He has stuck by his claim -- despite the findings of numerous national and international intelligence community investigations and even a Republican senate investigations -- that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 election. And despite his founding of the Intercept in part to investigate abuses by people in power (and his constant criticism that the press never publishes negative articles about people on their side) he has never written a single article critical of any of the abuses of power by the Trump administration. Not a single article critical of anything Trump has done in the past four years. [1] 1. All articles: https://muckrack.com/ggreenwald/articles https://muckrack.com/ggreenwald/articles
    - skindoe 6y ago
      Define "interfere" what specifically did Russia do and how did that quantitatively effect the election results. I'm willing to put serious money down that the vast majority of people like yourself can't answer that question without linking to an op ed piece. Come on people we're engineers think about it... Ask yourself why that is.

karl11 6y ago

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.

jpadkins 6y ago
> simply how many ads and subscriptions the stories can sell. I don't think this is actually right. I think owners of news media companies want influence more than profit. I don't think Bezos is buying news media for the profits... The influence helps for their other goals.
- jrs235 6y ago
  >helps for their other goals To profit?
  - luckylion 6y ago
    Power. You can profit from power, but you could also genuinely believe that the world will be a better place if only everyone did what you said. In both cases you need power.
- sbilstein 6y ago
  Techies, thanks to a bunch of dumb twitter talking heads, seem to think journalists are just rolling in bundles of cash from clicks. They're not. The vast majority of them, even the ones with upwards of 20k twitter followers, barely make any money. Influence is definitely more important to them than cash.

gameswithgo 6y ago

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? He explicitly talks about this attitude in this interview: https://www.vox.com/2016/9/15/12853236/glenn-greenwald-trump-clinton 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.

whimsicalism 6y ago
This is where the distinction between "act" and "rule" consequentialism becomes important. Perhaps there is "too much" on the line, but I think that we live in a complex world, it is difficult to estimate the downstream impacts of your action, and that every time you choose to suppress a story due to potential political consequences, you are undermining broader "trust." Better to default to reporting freely since, as a rule, suppressing stories generally erodes trust, whereas the direct downstream impact of airing a specific story can be difficult to estimate in a complex world.
- garden_hermit 6y ago
  Both both blocking and running a story are conscious actions with political consequences and which have the potential to undermine trust. Plenty of people lost trust in the media following their focus on the Hillary Clinton email scandal, which amounted to nothing but likely swayed the election. There seems to be some sort of paradox of tolerance to trust and the news media. In principle, we should allow all information. However, bad faith actors can easily take advantage of this principle, and flood the airwaves with dubious and ultimately-overblown stories (see Clinton's emails). If bad-faith actors are afoot (which seems the case here), then at some point an editor needs to step in and refuse to print the story—the question though, is when? And is there anyway to step in, and have it not look like censorship?

oh_sigh 6y ago

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".

confidantlake 6y ago
It isn't impossible to tell who is right or we would never know anything. Maybe Ted Cruz's dad assassinated JFK or maybe he didn't. Who knows, both sides say the other side is nonsense.
- oh_sigh 6y ago
  I never made the argument that is generally impossible to tell who is right.

vanattab 6y ago

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?

starkd 6y ago
And Biden could/should have addressed this issue. Before he got the nomination, a number of outfits - Politico, Bloomberg - were running stories about his deals. Back when they wanted someone different nominated. You thnk the democrats would have learned not to nominate another clinton.

rllearneratwork 6y ago

his track record is good enough proof for any editor to know that story is NOT a garbage. I guess this is WHY they actually censored it.

lordnacho 6y ago
You can't just waive it through on the strength of his reputation, you have to check the sources.
- rllearneratwork 6y ago
  you have to apply the same standard to other stories then. If you wait until everything is 100% verified you'll publish nothing

meowface 6y ago

You're assuming it's a garbage story and that it's intended to influence the election based on absolutely nothing. Why not make counter-arguments to the actual piece, when it comes out? I'd argue that all of the rampant censorship about any conceivable questioning or criticism of Biden is the thing that history is likely going to look back on in a few months, and perhaps years, as unethical and irresponsible journalistic conduct. I disagree with some of Greenwald's stances, but he and Matt Taibbi seem to be the only actual journalists left in the country, that I'm aware of. It's mind-boggling. I strongly dislike Trump as president and as a person, I think he's probably the worst president we've had from a domestic perspective, and I couldn't disagree more with him and his party's agenda, but as of the past few days I almost want to see him win due to all of this recent censorship tipping the scales. Almost like an Oedipus-style prophecy ironically fulfilled by the attempt to prevent it. I don't actually want him to win, but I want these people to have this blow up in their face. The cover-up is probably a lot worse than the allegations (which don't seem that damaging, going by the leaked emails, but I'm curious to see Greenwald's analysis), and I bet this is turning many more people further from media outlets and closer to Trump or at least further from the left. Even if he loses the election, I think the past few weeks have shown he might have already won. Not due to anything he did, but solely due to an entirely avoidable shooting of oneself in the foot. This could have ripple effects that last longer than the next 4 years.

dkural 6y ago
You're already buying into the propaganda - there is nothing to "cover-up" per se, there can't be a cover-up, because there is nothing to cover up, there is no story. Imagine multiple media outlets simultaneously get an email saying "Meowface denies being Dogface during the night". If someone refuses to print this, due lack of evidence and lack of truth - that is not called a cover-up. There is no reason to dignify it with airtime in the first place. After all one can publish this sort of stuff on blogs, internet forums, tabloids etc. Curation is the true news product - sifting of truth from untruth is one way to do it.
- meowface 6y ago
  I may very well turn out to be wrong, but I think the emails are more likely than not all real. But even if they all turn out to be completely doctored, there's a much more responsible way of handling the information. Of course it'd be absurd to assume the emails are real, but it's almost as absurd to assume they can't be real and that to even attempt to objectively assess the claim is falling for propaganda. This is a true Shiri's scissor, here. The left-leaning journalists who recognize, in my opinion, how ridiculous this behavior is vs. the rest are basically living on different planets.

haberman 6y ago

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."

happytoexplain 6y ago
Ignoring the mischaracterization of the two points, what are you trying to say? That those two thoughts are not allowed to exist in the same "group" of people, for some definition of "group"?
- haberman 6y ago
  The rationale for censorship of Greenwald's article is unconvincing, as that rationale is contradicted even by other people who agree with the censorship. As the story is already running elsewhere, it is unconvincing that there is a pressing need for this particular outlet to suppress it.
  - bikezen 6y ago
    If other outlets want to put their reputations on the line for something you can't vet, do you want to jump into the mud with them? The intercept decided no, seems pretty simple.
  - mjlawson 6y ago
    That isn't the rationale that the editors used to make copy suggestions - that's the rationale that Greenwald is projecting onto them. I suggest reading the email thread he posted on his blog - it does not make him look very good.
disown 6y ago
Not only do they justify censorship, there is a suspicious amount of comments trying to minimize or delegitimize greenwald in a sneaky boilerplate response: "I used to think he was a good journalist", "I used to respect his journalism 5 years ago", etc. And of course trying to tie greenwald to russia. The exact same thing you see on assange related post. The sad thing is a lot of these commenters are journalists or work in the news industry. Sad thing to see. Not to mention the downvote brigading.

otikik 6y ago

"Letting readers decide who is right" is always good thing. But they rarely do that. Most take the spicy title (or out-of-context incorrect quote from Twitter) which reaffirms their opinion and run with it. They share, like and subscribe. And the article keeps being shared, liked and subscribed for months, even if it was disproven minutes after it was published. So instead of being a way to find the truth the article ends up being a way to validate missinformation. I don't know what the solution to this problem is. Just wanted to point out that "letting them decide" has a lot of problems.

macinjosh 6y ago

> 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.

confidantlake 6y ago
Investigating whether a story is true or not is a fundamental part of journalism. Not publishing stories about Bat Boy found with Elvis in Atlantas is a good thing.

collegecamp293 6y ago

> 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/ 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.

rat87 6y ago
And all? most? of his colleagues with fairly similar political views and a dedication to good journalism are opposed. Glenn seems to have picked his personal grudge over journalistic integrity

amadeuspagel 6y ago

That's apparently how it was supposed to work at the intercept, according to his contract. Strange that he thinks his readers ... are actually going to read the article?

Cullinet 6y ago

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-secrets/ https://theintercept.com/2014/10/28/smuggling-snowden-secret...

disgruntledphd2 6y ago
I believe that you are talking about Assange and the GPG key, right? I believe that that was a former Guardian journalist, not Greenwald.

dilap 6y ago

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.

kyleblarson 6y ago

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?

mathnovice 6y ago

I'm going to trust Glenn Greenwald's knowledge of journalistic ethics over yours.

edmundsauto 6y ago
What about the editors' opinions? They have a better perspective than anyone.

lanevorockz 6y ago

lol ... The editor though that the truth is less important than the election. It's the same as what happened in Social Media. Sadly, it means they can never be trusted ever again.

richardARPANET 6y ago

You're clearly brainwashed.

jeegsy 6y ago

> 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.

lubesGordi 6y ago

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.

pvg 6y ago

The Intercept's editor-in-chief has put out a statement of their own. https://twitter.com/ErikWemple/status/1321896097099489283 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.

RonanTheGrey 6y ago
That statement reads, to me, as unprofessional and petulant. What kind of editor makes a personal attack on a former colleague in a public setting in the name of a journalistic organization? It simply drives home to me the idea that it was the editors, not Greenwald, who are being petty dictators. I guess how this whole debacle is received will probably depend on one's life experience.
- pvg 6y ago
  Greenwald called them pathological, censorious, illiberal and equates editorial oversight with censorship. It's hardly petulant and unprofessional to suggest, in response, that he's behaving like a grown-ass dude throwing a tantrum. He's also just published their recent correspondence. It doesn't make him look great either: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/emails-with-intercept-editors-showing https://greenwald.substack.com/p/emails-with-intercept-edito...
  - dvtrn 6y ago
    What is the difference between a “grown-ass dude throwing a tantrum” and a “grown-ass dude vociferously disagreeing with the ethics of his former employer”? I’m not asking to make a point or take a side in this via a pretense of Socratic method, I’m asking to try understanding the motivations and intentions of how Greenwald is being depicted in terms of ‘throwing tantrums’ as a non-journalist fan of journalism.
    - pvg 6y ago
      I think that one's pretty straightforward. 'I completely disagree with your editorial direction' is disagreeing with your employer. 'Your editing is censorship and suppression of truths only I have gleaned' is throwing a tantrum. I guess it I have a hard time understanding how one can read all of the presented material and come away with the impression Glenn Greenwald is the misrepresented party in some vigorous but rational and fact-based discussion.

kolanos 6y ago

> ...garbage story... > I want to be clear that I'm not claiming to know the truth as it relates to this story... Make up your mind.

glaring 6y ago
You are trying to frame these two quotes as being contradictory by leaving out the words preceding the first quote. Why would you do that? It should read: "If the editor concludes that it's a garbage story..." Looks like including the entire sentence makes it pretty clear that this isn't a self-contradicting position to take.
- acituan 6y ago
  Except the GPs initial framing was not honest to begin with: editors' dismissal is not based on the story being garbage; details of this dismissal is contested and exactly the issue under discussion here. If GP couldn't resist a low effort editorializing of this dismissal reason, they don't get to claim neutrality or agnosticism two sentences later. Besides, the rest of their post clearly indicates they do think the story is garbage. It looks as if they are giving a spin of legitimacy to that angle as if that was also what editors thought.

ffggvv 6y ago

lol thank god we have censors like you to determine what articles the greatest, most impactful journalist of our lifetimes can publish. how would we he know whats newsworthy otherwise.

cblconfederate 6y ago

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.

GekkePrutser 6y ago

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.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
If. But if the article contains some outright falsehoods about serious misconduct, and it still influences the election, is that a good thing? Mind you, I'm not clearly on the "don't publish" side. But that position is not clearly wrong.

ChuckMcM 6y ago

I was coming here to say the same. When you have all of the intelligence agencies you trust saying "Hey there are nation-state actors who are actively trying to sow dis-information in order to affect the outcome of the US elections." as an editor your only response can be "We are going to be really really choosy about stories we publish with respect to either candidate prior to the election." Maybe it is a big scoop and all legit, and maybe it will like the "Hunter files" that Fox News was touting and have now mysteriously vanished. The responsible thing to do is publish after the election. What ever the story talks about will still be true or untrue then, and the risk of it being an elaborate hoax are non-zero. Nobody wants to be the person who was "duped by a foreign intelligence service into helping them move the election their way." That is not a badge of honor.

vr46 6y ago

The response from The Intercept: https://theintercept.com/2020/10/29/glenn-greenwald-resigns-the-intercept/ https://theintercept.com/2020/10/29/glenn-greenwald-resigns-...

sandwichest 6y ago

> "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 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.

Nacdor 6y ago
The most shocking part of this whole fiasco is the way The Intercept's editors blatantly play favorites, allowing disinformation that helps Biden while censoring a legitimate story that hurts him: > 4) Finally, I have to note what I find to be the incredible irony that The Intercept -- which has published more articles than I can count that contain factually dubious claims if not outright falsehoods that are designed to undermine Trump's candidacy or protect Joe Biden -- is now telling me, someone who has never had an article retracted or even seriously corrected in 15 years, that my journalism doesn't meet the editorial requirements to be published at the Intercept. > It was The Intercept that took the lead in falsely claiming that publication by the NY Post was part of a campaign of "Russian disinformation" -- and did so by (a) uncritically citing the allegations of ex-CIA officials as truth, and (b) so much worse: omitting the sentence in the letter from the ex-CIA officials admitting they had no evidence for that claim. In other words, the Intercept -- in the only article that it bothered to publish that makes passing reference to these documents -- did so only by mindlessly repeating what CIA operatives say. And it turned out to be completely false. This -- CIA stenography -- is what meets the Intercept's rigorous editorial standards: > "The U.S. intelligence community had previously warned the White House that Giuliani has been the target of a Russian intelligence operation to disseminate disinformation about Biden, and the FBI has been investigating whether the strange story about the Biden laptop is part of a Russian disinformation campaign. This week, a group of former intelligence officials issued a letter saying that the Giuliani laptop story has the classic trademarks of Russian disinformation." > The Intercept deleted from that quotation of the CIA's claims this rather significant statement: "we do not have evidence of Russian involvement." > Repeatedly over the past several months, I've brought to Betsy's attention false claims that were published by The Intercept in articles that were designed to protect Biden and malign Trump. Some have been corrected or quietly deleted, while others were just left standing. https://greenwald.substack.com/p/emails-with-intercept-editors-showing https://greenwald.substack.com/p/emails-with-intercept-edito...

temp8964 6y ago

If the "golden showers" is not a garbage story, I don't know what is.

raxxorrax 6y ago

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.

not_a_moth 6y ago

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.

cmiles74 6y ago

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."

jojobas 6y ago

He was an editor with contractually guaranteed editorial freedom.

kelnos 6y ago

> That's not how this works. 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.

warlord1 6y ago

Why is it a garbage story? Would it be a garbage story if the photos/sex vids were Trump's? The mainstream media wouldn't call it a "garbage story" they'd call it some kitchsy bullshit thing like "crisis of democracy" or "bombshell"... You get the idea. You're assuming the quality of the journalism in direct contradiction to the images/videos/SMS that's already in the wild.

dalbasal 6y ago

That's their position, but he has is his. 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.