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KittenInABox 6y ago
According to the response by the Intercept he's actually flipping out against basic edit suggestions as censorship. [0]. https://twitter.com/ErikWemple/status/1321896097099489283/photo/1 https://twitter.com/ErikWemple/status/1321896097099489283/ph... Seems like a temper tantrum to me, even if the journalism is legitimate. It could very well be these claims are clickbait for the journalist to strike out on his own without the publisher.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  > According to the response by the Intercept he's actually flipping out against basic edit suggestions as censorship Source? Your link doesn't say anything about basic edit suggestions. Looking at the emails [0], this appears to be strong editorializing (much of it far from clearcut) for what (I believe) is an opinion piece. [0]: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/emails-with-intercept-editors-showing https://greenwald.substack.com/p/emails-with-intercept-edito...?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - KittenInABox 6y ago
    I'm reading the emails and they seem to be perfectly reasonable edit suggestions (I'm a person that's familiar with the editing process)- it points out that the article is attempting to accomplish too much with evidence that is actually vague and suggests increased focus to critique that liberal media isn't holding Biden's feet to the fire. Asking for an article to be narrowed down in scope is a perfectly good suggestion as an editorial board, especially in news articles where too much stuff can make the article ineffective. Furthermore, the editor is nothing less than professional/polite, while the response is full of wild accusations like "What's happening here is obvious: you know that you can't explicitly say you don't want to publish the article because it raises questions about the candidate you and all other TI Editors want very much to win the election in 5 days." It looks like a tantrum to me.
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      > I'm a person that's familiar with the editing process I am also very familiar with the editing process. I'm not saying that the editing suggestions are beyond what you would ever see in an editorial context, but I would never characterize them as "basic edit suggestions." Much of the quibbling in the edits to me suggests ulterior motive, like the rejection of the idea that there has been "suppression" of the story (there obviously has). And if you're familiar with the editing process, you'd know that edits are not always completely apolitical, I know people who have been asked to make edits for political reasons in major national publications. I think it is hard to claim this is just equal editorial scrutiny, given the publication of multiple false claims around the Hunter Biden story (ie. "very likely to be Russian disinformation", etc.). > the editor is nothing less than professional/polite To me, I don't necessarily always side with the actor who appears to be more professional, though I do agree that Greenwald comes off as rude in the email.
    - meowface 6y ago
      I think Greenwald is probably right regarding his accusations in the email, but I agree that they weren't necessary to include, at least so early in the discussion process. He did seem to react unnecessarily harshly, before his email even received a reply. As you say, he was the one who first began displaying the unprofessional behavior. He probably should have just sent like half of his follow-up email (the citations of the email compared to the article) and given them a chance to reply. But I also understand why he felt he was being unduly pressured and why staying there wouldn't have been wise for him.
hluska 6y ago
I read the entire draft and I’m going to disagree with you. Rather than write a lengthy diatribe, I’ll start with my main point. This is all very neat and tidy and while it may all be true, we live in a political climate where foreign governments interfere in elections by spreading disinformation. In that case, an editor is absolutely correct to push back, make suggestions and ensure their otherwise respectable publication is not used as a tool to spread more disinformation the week before an election.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  > we live in a political climate where foreign governments interfere in elections by spreading disinformation. In that case, an editor is absolutely correct to push back This is paternalistic to the extreme. Do we get to vote on whether we want such a society or is it just imposed by editorial fiat? > spread more disinformation the week before an election. You read the draft. Could you point out the explicit falsehoods to me? Or are you saying we should stop the spread of inconvenient opinion pieces?
  - hluska 6y ago
    I vaguely understand the paternalistic side of your argument, but if you want to abandon editorial rigour, we have something already built for that. It’s called social media. If social media doesn’t turn your crank, start your own publication and establish your own editorial fiat. HOWEVER, there’s a problem - if your editing sucks, you won’t attract enough readers to maintain high standards. That’s kind of the shit part of the free market - you can’t just go push a substandard product and scream about “my freedom”. Ultimately, this draft needed some work and if you go through this thread, you can read some of the Intercept’s own comments. Personally, I found the section about possible disinformation to need more meat. The connection between the Vice President and the company is too tenuous. The article needs to cover WHY experts think it is disinformation, even just to strengthen the claim that it isn’t. It doesn’t much matter what you want to read, but an editor still had to find balance and appropriate context. Otherwise, publications suck...
    - 6y ago
Zafira 6y ago
The draft itself also has a not insignificant amount of leaps of faith that are not helpful in the current environment: "Beyond that, the Journal's columnist Kimberly Strassel reviewed a stash of documents..."---this is an opinion article, why isn't the newsroom covering this explosive story? "All of these new materials, the authenticity of which has never been disputed by Hunter Biden or the Biden campaign"---absence of a denial is not proof of its validity. "Facebook, through a long-time former Democratic Party operative, vowed to suppress the story pending its “fact-check,” one that has as of yet produced no public conclusions."---an unnamed source told me that Facebook is really trying to push the election to Biden… Even if Greenwald is sincere in his attempts to daylight the truth, he increasingly seems unaware or unwilling to accept that he might be or is being used as a useful idiot by foreign agents.
- meowface 6y ago
  >"All of these new materials, the authenticity of which has never been disputed by Hunter Biden or the Biden campaign"---absence of a denial is not proof of its validity. He explicitly explains why he thinks it does serve as some additional evidence of such, and I agree with it. It's not proof, but it's evidence: >Why is the failure of the Bidens to claim that these emails are forged so significant? Because when journalists report on a massive archive, they know that the most important event in the reporting's authentication process comes when the subjects of the reporting have an opportunity to deny that the materials are genuine. Of course that is what someone would do if major media outlets were preparing to publish, or in fact were publishing, fabricated or forged materials in their names; they would say so in order to sow doubt about the materials if not kill the credibility of the reporting. >The silence of the Bidens may not be dispositive on the question of the material’s authenticity, but when added to the mountain of other authentication evidence, it is quite convincing: at least equal to the authentication evidence in other reporting on similarly large archives. ---- >Facebook, through a long-time former Democratic Party operative, vowed to suppress the story pending its “fact-check,” one that has as of yet produced no public conclusions."---an unnamed source told me that Facebook is really trying to push the election to Biden… He doesn't name him in this article for some reason, but he links another article he wrote, where he explains this: https://theintercept.com/2020/10/15/facebook-and-twitter-cross-a-line-far-more-dangerous-than-what-they-censor/ https://theintercept.com/2020/10/15/facebook-and-twitter-cro... >Just two hours after the story was online, Facebook intervened. The company dispatched a life-long Democratic Party operative who now works for Facebook — Andy Stone, previously a communications operative for Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, among other D.C. Democratic jobs — to announce that Facebook was “reducing [the article’s] distribution on our platform”: in other words, tinkering with its own algorithms to suppress the ability of users to discuss or share the news article. The long-time Democratic Party official did not try to hide his contempt for the article, beginning his censorship announcement by snidely noting: “I will intentionally not link to the New York Post.”

[removed]

According to the response by the Intercept he's actually flipping out against basic edit suggestions as censorship. [0]. https://twitter.com/ErikWemple/status/1321896097099489283/photo/1 https://twitter.com/ErikWemple/status/1321896097099489283/ph... Seems like a temper tantrum to me, even if the journalism is legitimate. It could very well be these claims are clickbait for the journalist to strike out on his own without the publisher.

whimsicalism 6y ago
> According to the response by the Intercept he's actually flipping out against basic edit suggestions as censorship Source? Your link doesn't say anything about basic edit suggestions. Looking at the emails [0], this appears to be strong editorializing (much of it far from clearcut) for what (I believe) is an opinion piece. [0]: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/emails-with-intercept-editors-showing https://greenwald.substack.com/p/emails-with-intercept-edito...?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- KittenInABox 6y ago
  I'm reading the emails and they seem to be perfectly reasonable edit suggestions (I'm a person that's familiar with the editing process)- it points out that the article is attempting to accomplish too much with evidence that is actually vague and suggests increased focus to critique that liberal media isn't holding Biden's feet to the fire. Asking for an article to be narrowed down in scope is a perfectly good suggestion as an editorial board, especially in news articles where too much stuff can make the article ineffective. Furthermore, the editor is nothing less than professional/polite, while the response is full of wild accusations like "What's happening here is obvious: you know that you can't explicitly say you don't want to publish the article because it raises questions about the candidate you and all other TI Editors want very much to win the election in 5 days." It looks like a tantrum to me.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    > I'm a person that's familiar with the editing process I am also very familiar with the editing process. I'm not saying that the editing suggestions are beyond what you would ever see in an editorial context, but I would never characterize them as "basic edit suggestions." Much of the quibbling in the edits to me suggests ulterior motive, like the rejection of the idea that there has been "suppression" of the story (there obviously has). And if you're familiar with the editing process, you'd know that edits are not always completely apolitical, I know people who have been asked to make edits for political reasons in major national publications. I think it is hard to claim this is just equal editorial scrutiny, given the publication of multiple false claims around the Hunter Biden story (ie. "very likely to be Russian disinformation", etc.). > the editor is nothing less than professional/polite To me, I don't necessarily always side with the actor who appears to be more professional, though I do agree that Greenwald comes off as rude in the email.
  - meowface 6y ago
    I think Greenwald is probably right regarding his accusations in the email, but I agree that they weren't necessary to include, at least so early in the discussion process. He did seem to react unnecessarily harshly, before his email even received a reply. As you say, he was the one who first began displaying the unprofessional behavior. He probably should have just sent like half of his follow-up email (the citations of the email compared to the article) and given them a chance to reply. But I also understand why he felt he was being unduly pressured and why staying there wouldn't have been wise for him.

hluska 6y ago

I read the entire draft and I’m going to disagree with you. Rather than write a lengthy diatribe, I’ll start with my main point. This is all very neat and tidy and while it may all be true, we live in a political climate where foreign governments interfere in elections by spreading disinformation. In that case, an editor is absolutely correct to push back, make suggestions and ensure their otherwise respectable publication is not used as a tool to spread more disinformation the week before an election.

whimsicalism 6y ago
> we live in a political climate where foreign governments interfere in elections by spreading disinformation. In that case, an editor is absolutely correct to push back This is paternalistic to the extreme. Do we get to vote on whether we want such a society or is it just imposed by editorial fiat? > spread more disinformation the week before an election. You read the draft. Could you point out the explicit falsehoods to me? Or are you saying we should stop the spread of inconvenient opinion pieces?
- hluska 6y ago
  I vaguely understand the paternalistic side of your argument, but if you want to abandon editorial rigour, we have something already built for that. It’s called social media. If social media doesn’t turn your crank, start your own publication and establish your own editorial fiat. HOWEVER, there’s a problem - if your editing sucks, you won’t attract enough readers to maintain high standards. That’s kind of the shit part of the free market - you can’t just go push a substandard product and scream about “my freedom”. Ultimately, this draft needed some work and if you go through this thread, you can read some of the Intercept’s own comments. Personally, I found the section about possible disinformation to need more meat. The connection between the Vice President and the company is too tenuous. The article needs to cover WHY experts think it is disinformation, even just to strengthen the claim that it isn’t. It doesn’t much matter what you want to read, but an editor still had to find balance and appropriate context. Otherwise, publications suck...
  - 6y ago

Zafira 6y ago

The draft itself also has a not insignificant amount of leaps of faith that are not helpful in the current environment: "Beyond that, the Journal's columnist Kimberly Strassel reviewed a stash of documents..."---this is an opinion article, why isn't the newsroom covering this explosive story? "All of these new materials, the authenticity of which has never been disputed by Hunter Biden or the Biden campaign"---absence of a denial is not proof of its validity. "Facebook, through a long-time former Democratic Party operative, vowed to suppress the story pending its “fact-check,” one that has as of yet produced no public conclusions."---an unnamed source told me that Facebook is really trying to push the election to Biden… Even if Greenwald is sincere in his attempts to daylight the truth, he increasingly seems unaware or unwilling to accept that he might be or is being used as a useful idiot by foreign agents.

meowface 6y ago
>"All of these new materials, the authenticity of which has never been disputed by Hunter Biden or the Biden campaign"---absence of a denial is not proof of its validity. He explicitly explains why he thinks it does serve as some additional evidence of such, and I agree with it. It's not proof, but it's evidence: >Why is the failure of the Bidens to claim that these emails are forged so significant? Because when journalists report on a massive archive, they know that the most important event in the reporting's authentication process comes when the subjects of the reporting have an opportunity to deny that the materials are genuine. Of course that is what someone would do if major media outlets were preparing to publish, or in fact were publishing, fabricated or forged materials in their names; they would say so in order to sow doubt about the materials if not kill the credibility of the reporting. >The silence of the Bidens may not be dispositive on the question of the material’s authenticity, but when added to the mountain of other authentication evidence, it is quite convincing: at least equal to the authentication evidence in other reporting on similarly large archives. ---- >Facebook, through a long-time former Democratic Party operative, vowed to suppress the story pending its “fact-check,” one that has as of yet produced no public conclusions."---an unnamed source told me that Facebook is really trying to push the election to Biden… He doesn't name him in this article for some reason, but he links another article he wrote, where he explains this: https://theintercept.com/2020/10/15/facebook-and-twitter-cross-a-line-far-more-dangerous-than-what-they-censor/ https://theintercept.com/2020/10/15/facebook-and-twitter-cro... >Just two hours after the story was online, Facebook intervened. The company dispatched a life-long Democratic Party operative who now works for Facebook — Andy Stone, previously a communications operative for Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, among other D.C. Democratic jobs — to announce that Facebook was “reducing [the article’s] distribution on our platform”: in other words, tinkering with its own algorithms to suppress the ability of users to discuss or share the news article. The long-time Democratic Party official did not try to hide his contempt for the article, beginning his censorship announcement by snidely noting: “I will intentionally not link to the New York Post.”