21 ms·

NYT reporter falsely accuses tech investor of using a slur

• eitland 6y ago
  >the Times’ tech team quickly donned their hall-monitor goggles and Stasi notebooks to warn that the Bad People had migrated to Signal and Telegram. This week they asked: “Are Private Messaging Apps the Next Misinformation Hot Spot?” One reporter “confess[ed] that I am worried about Telegram. Other than private messaging, people love to use Telegram for group chats — up to 200,000 people can meet inside a Telegram chat room. That seems problematic.” I'm already hearing this in local debates. It seems to seriously scare some folks that there are places where they cannot deplatform whoever they want for anything. (PS: Open groups and channels are not encrypted on Telegram servers and can be reported. It is just that Telegram doesn't have a history of letting other abuse it.) Edit: I've been planning to subscribe for a while. I do now. Do it if $5 is pocket money for you. If not for this then for something else he have done. Good journalism is extremely important but much of what we see today is a mix of extreme bias, outright lies and outrage manufacturing.
  • jameslk 6y ago
    I wonder what Telegram and Signal are hosting on? Is it one of the big cloud providers? Could they be deplatformed for harboring "terrorists" on their platforms?
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
      • elliekelly 6y ago
        > Signal and Telegram are already compromised. By whom? What topics are unable to be freely discussed on these applications?
    • freedomben 6y ago
      If you take John Brennan at his word, yes, it is coming. Many powerful Democrat lawmakers are working toward allowing law enforcement (FBI, etc) to have the same tools against "domestic terror" as they do again foreign terror. Greenwald himself did a great write up about it: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-new-domestic-war-on-terror-is https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-new-domestic-war-on-ter...
      • at-fates-hands 6y ago
        I'm still wondering how the incredibly large intelligence gathering apparatus in this country was unable to thwart an attack that was being planned openly on social media, in broad daylight. If you can't even stop an attack you should have known was imminent, how does giving them even MORE tools stem the massive failure that allowed the attack to happen in the first place?
        • call_me_dana 6y ago
          Well... simply, it was allowed to happen. Specifically to build support for new draconian domestic terror laws. The government is incredibly paranoid about a domestic uprising so they collectively start drooling when an opportunity to pass laws like this presents itself.
  • ceejayoz 6y ago
    The "Are Private Messaging Apps the Next Misinformation Hot Spot?" article doesn't actually demand (or even propose) censorship as asserted by Greenwald, as far as I can tell. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/technology/personaltech/telegram-signal-misinformation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/technology/personaltech/t... > So what’s your take? Are you concerned? > KEVIN Honestly, not really? and > I’m not as worried about Signal. Similar to WhatsApp, Signal set a limit so that you can forward messages to only five people at a time. So it would be time-consuming for misinformation spreaders to make a message go viral. Also, Signal limits group chats to up to 1,000 people. That’s large, but not as huge as a Telegram group chat. It's an article about how misinformation can spread here, but probably less significantly than on other platforms.
    • ryanSrich 6y ago
      Regardless of substance, journalists should have enough integrity to not title an article "Are Private Messaging Apps the Next Misinformation Hot Spot?". "Misinformation" is among the list of grossly overused words in online discourse. It has no meaning, other than to exist as the boogyman. "Hot Spot". Another sensationalist phrase used to scare readers into thinking anyone that even slightly disagrees with their point is out there somewhere planning another attack. The title also points to the continuation of painting tech as evil. As if "Private Messaging Apps" have anything to do with the primary concern, "Misinformation". It's a poorly written article with an even poorly written title. If you don't think articles like this are written specifically to inadvertently call for the censorship of more voices, it's going to be hard to find common ground.
      • ceejayoz 6y ago
        > Regardless of substance, journalists should have enough integrity to not title an article "Are Private Messaging Apps the Next Misinformation Hot Spot?". How about this one: "The Journalistic Tattletale and Censorship Industry Suffers Several Well-Deserved Blows"
        • ryanSrich 6y ago
  • throwawaysea 6y ago
    Thanks for the reminder on subscribing. I agree good journalism is extremely important, and a diverse set of sources is important as well. I've been feeling like we need alternatives to massive mainstream news media houses that increasingly seem like a battleground for ideological war in the newsroom. Are there any other independent journalists you would recommend?
    • throwaway20875 6y ago
      Matt Taibbi is pretty good.
      • throwaway20875 6y ago
        I'm getting downvoted for recommending a journalist. We're headed for interesting times.
    • eitland 6y ago
      I subscribe to my local newspaper and one national one. I also sometimes send a bunch of money to the Guardian when I read something interesting there, probably more than I feel like for just the Guardian, but there's nowhere else I can pay for stories, everyone else want me to subscribe.
    • hackissimo123 6y ago
      > Are there any other independent journalists you would recommend? I pay for Andrew Sullivan's Substack and reading his weekly column is always a highlight of my Friday. He's not really a "journalist" but John McWhorter's Substack is excellent too.
    • mjcohen 6y ago
      Naked Capitalism.
  • eachro 6y ago
    If people actually read that Chen/Roose piece they'd see that the conversation being had was much more tempered. I saw the point as about the dangers of being in a large echo chamber. For ex: on twitter, if a non-private account shares an article that completely misrepresents some statistc, there's a reasonable chance someone will swoop into their replies and push back on it. We see this all the time with both right leaning and left leaning pundits. Does this dynamic go away in large telegram chat rooms? My guess is it still happens in some form (give people some credit, most people are not blind fools). But then again, who really knows unless you're in the private group?
    • kgog 6y ago
      I used to respect Greenwald a LOT. But his newsletter and rhetoric lately is just an anti-journalism dog whistle.
  • stonogo 6y ago
    > Good journalism is extremely important but much of what we see today is a mix of extreme bias, outright lies and outrage manufacturing. I haven't seen Greenwald do much other than outrage manufacturing in some years. I guess it's paying the bills.
    • tehjoker 6y ago
      What about the time he broke the story of Sergio Moro in Brazil and flipped the story of the Operation Car Wash corruption investigation (for which he was regularly threatened with bodily harm)?
    • astrange 6y ago
      Greenwald’s pretending to be a libertarian journalist (but actually just hating US Democrats) is better than what he did before, defending neo-Nazis pretending to be a free speech advocate (but actually because he was one of them).
      • tehjoker 6y ago
        Accusing Greenwald of being a Nazi is pretty uncalled for. I (a Jew) despise Nazis, but I can certainly distinguish between someone calling for the older liberal line of free speech for everyone (something Noam Chomsky has done [0]) and advocating for racial purity via ethnic cleansing. You can say that such a position might help Nazis, but to draw zero distinction is troubling. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faurisson_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faurisson_affair
        • astrange 6y ago
          I am not making a general claim, I’m making a specific claim about him. https://twitter.com/heresysquad/status/1191762909325492225?s=21 https://twitter.com/heresysquad/status/1191762909325492225?s... He was so enthusiastic about defending his clients (who were neo-Nazis, yes real ones, they do exist) that NY judges called him unethical in court and the bar banned his behavior after the fact. https://twitter.com/charliearchy/status/1110344950674186240?s=21 https://twitter.com/charliearchy/status/1110344950674186240?...
  • klmadfejno 6y ago
    It blows my mind that someone would read > 'the Times’ tech team quickly donned their hall-monitor goggles and Stasi notebooks to warn that the Bad People had migrated to Signal and Telegram.' and then decide this was good quality, unbiased journalism worth paying for. And then go on to post that sentence as evidence of its goodness. Looks like anger porn to me.
    • dkjaudyeqooe 6y ago
      You don't have look far to see how popular anger porn is today. I guess he knows his market.
    • eitland 6y ago
      Journalism doesn't have to be boring. It is not a requirement. It doesn't even always have to be unbiased. But it should stick to the facts, something he does if you can ignore the witty parts. Besides, that decision was made after reading more of the post, not just that part.
    • freedomben 6y ago
      I think Greenwald uses a lot of snark, and I wish he would restrain himself a bit because I think he turns a lot of people off with that approach. That said, he has a level of authenticity and honesty about his biases that is sorely lacking in many journalists these days. A lot of reporters feel as passionate about the subjects they cover as he does, but they aren't forthright about it. Regarding journalistic value, his pieces are always loaded with links and references. I like reading his articles because I can easily read the stuff he is referencing to see if I interpret them the same way, and try to see whether I see things differently.
      • jancsika 6y ago
        > A lot of reporters feel as passionate about the subjects they cover as he does, but they aren't forthright about it. First-rate journalism highlights the subject's corruption or bad behavior with such persuasive and overwhelming evidence that the audience generally judges the person or organization under discussion to be a mendacious object of derision. That is an accurate characterization of the journalism on the Snowden leaks that Greenwald won the Pulitzer for. E.g., the story on NSA spying on Petrobras. Second-rate journalism simply cuts out the middle-man and casually derides the person directly for an audience that is drooling to see that person taken down a peg. E.g., "Liz Cheney is a compulsive liar who will say anything to manipulate the public, just like her father taught her to do."[1] I have no idea why Greenwald insists on using techniques of second-rate journalism in his op-eds-- op-eds which quite obviously also include a lot of background research. But I find his consistent use of second-rate journalism steers his rhetoric in directions that directly mislead the reader. E.g., when AOC tweeted about WSB, Greenwald alleged that she wanted to "claim these Redditors as their own," as he wrote in one of his articles. That's a mischaracterization of what she did, and apparently those Redditors agree with me: https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l6fg8q/aoc_got_our_backs/ https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l6fg8q/aoc_... The responses there are a lot of fun to read-- lots of riffs, some surprising agreement, some reasonable disagreement. But as far as I can tell, nearly every default-visible comment there understood that she was uttering a relevant and common refrain from her political platform, not attempting to "claim" the users of WSB as current or even future social democrats. Politicians do this all the time-- e.g., Bernie Sanders did when as a presidential candidate in 2016 he spoke to Liberty University-- communicating to people with obvious opposing viewpoints where they are (albeit in her case with a bit of obvious snark) by focusing on common ground. That is fundamentally different than a politician claiming a constituency for themselves who is likely opposed to their views in reality. When a politician does that it's at the very least condescending, and you can probably imagine how a group of trash-talking free marketheads on Reddit would respond if AOC actually tried to do that. Greenwald's writing is littered with enough of these little boogers that it consistently gets in the way of his larger points. And in op-eds like his, there usually isn't that much original research in the first place-- there are plenty of other authors covering this territory who don't hurl completely unnecessary insults at people. Just look at the comment sections of his articles to get a sense of what kind of person this type of writing attracts. It's not as rabid and pretentious as a David Foster Wallace fan club, but it's close. [1] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-case-for-a-pardon-of-edward-snowden https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-case-for-a-pardon-of-ed...
  • alasdair_ 6y ago
    >Edit: I've been planning to subscribe for a while. I do now. >Do it if $5 is pocket money for you. If not for this then for something else he have done. Thanks for the reminder. I'd forgotten to after the mess at The Intercept.
  • newacct583 6y ago
    > It seems to seriously scare some folks that there are places where they cannot deplatform whoever they want for anything. If it's really possible for "some folks" to deplatform "whoever they want" "for anything", why is this power not available to me or anyone I know? I know it's glib, but... come on folks. The anti-anti-anti-cancel-culture hyperbole is officially out of control. It should be possible to have a legitimate conversation of whether or not Lorenz is correct about Andreesen, and whether or not the accusation constitutes behavior that should be condemned, without resulting to this kind of culture war screaming. If you really want good journalism, do you really believe the stuff you quoted from Greenwald qualifies? "Stasi notebooks", really?
    • vorpalhex 6y ago
      As Greenwald points out, these journalists work at major outlets and have huge followings which they can use - and have used - to shut down speech. Cancel culture is real and we must not allow it to be tolerated. I've been told that I'm "problematic" and should reconsider blogging... because I recommended a $40 pair of hair shears. Greenwald is being a bit melodramatic, but his substance isn't wrong. A reporter lied and attempted to slam a public figure - and if it wasn't for that conversation being widely heard she likely would of seriously harmed his reputation with her lie.
      • newacct583 6y ago
        > A reporter lied and attempted to slam a public figure That... seems kinda spun. The source material isn't so damning. Taylor Lorenz was on the call, and tweeted: "@pmarca just openly using the r-slur on Clubhouse tonight and not one other person in the room called him on it or saying anything" Then later when she was corrected that it wasn't Andreessen but someone else, replied: "Thanks for clarifying that it was Felicia saying that word, rather than Marc as many in the room heard it. I hope you can understand how some people in the room felt hearing it" I mean, as I (someone who reads and values Lorenz's work) read it, she was offended (more, it seems, at the casual use of "retarded" going unchallenged than at the specific speaker), and tweeted about it, but made a mistake in attribution which she recognized (while pointing out that her original offense was that the word wasn't challenged). And Greenwald wrote like 1000 words to go after her. And his essay, not her tweet, is at the top of HN right now. So... who's cancelling who here?
  • randomfool 6y ago
    One side of it is deplatforming, but the other side is protecting more vulnerable family and community members. The fact is that there are pied-pipers of disinformation on these platforms leading vulnerable members of our communities down rabbit-holes to who-knows-where. Normally we would address this with in-person confrontation but I think people are struggling to find the tools to protect their friends and families. People are being preyed upon and the victims may not be the ideal rational individuals that we aspire to. I'm not trying to say that censorship is a good thing, just that the tools that we may have once used to protect our communities are not adapting to the new environments.
    • commandlinefan 6y ago
      > the tools that we may have once used There were tabloid magazines full of "fake news" sold in supermarkets throughout my entire childhood. People would shake their heads and laugh at the silly headlines, but nobody, ever, talked seriously about censoring the tabloid newspapers just because they didn't believe what they were saying.
      • vippy 6y ago
        We didn't worry that tens of millions of people would read a false claim in a tabloid and storm the Capitol in an attempt to overturn an election either.
    • dcolkitt 6y ago
      I'm not necessarily saying this point is incorrect, but the structure of the argument bears a striking similarity to the same justification for laws against heresy and blasphemy in the time of Galileo.
      • jb775 6y ago
        The shift in social discourse over the past few years helped me understand how the Salem Witch Trials came to be.
      • marcus_holmes 6y ago
  • Spivak 6y ago
    > It seems to seriously scare some folks that there are places where they cannot deplatform whoever they want for anything. Jeez. At least give your opponents a charitable take on their argument. This stuff isn't some make-believe silencing of online Socratic circles that just happen to have "non-approved" viwes or "wrongthink". I don't think you get how scary some of these mobs are. They're online witch-hunts fueled by hate and the belief that their marks are the cause of the bad in the world. And when you add actually crazy people into the mix it bleeds over into the real world. They will doxx you, stalk you, find every public picture of you, your friends, your family online and send them to you with death threats. They will Photoshop those pictures so it looks like you're being tortured or raped and pass them around. If they find your address you'll start getting them in the mail and eventually messages with pictures of your house. Like this problem is hard. I want free and open communication as much as the next person it's not so easy. Trading other people's safety for my liberty doesn't sound quite as noble.
    • eitland 6y ago
      > Like this problem is hard. I want free and open communication as much as the next person it's not so easy. I want free and open communication as long as it does inconvenience me or those in power? Also remember: public groups and channels on Telegram are public. You can join them and report them if you want. What you cannot is join my family group and start judging my kids based on what they said one afternoon when they were angry. The problem here is that because of journalists like these we now have to prepare to defend Telegram against authorities, because some well connected journalists said it was the next evil thing after Parler. People believe this, just like they believe that MeWe is an alt-right hotspot (it is mostly ex-googleplusers discussing chili growing, general gardening, sharing landscape photos etc - unless maybe I haven't searched for the magic string that unlocks all the evil..?) The result is that ordinary people shy away from newer, better technology and fall back to/stick with abusers line Facebook. Yep. Facebook, the place that has hosted much more hate speech than any alternative platform I know of.
      • Spivak 6y ago
        > I want free and open communication as long as it does inconvenience me or those in power? I'll assume you mean doesn't but that's not at all what I'm saying. It's easy to take an absolute stance as long as your blind to or don't care about the consequences of it. > What you cannot is join my family group and start judging my kids based on what they said one afternoon when they were angry. What? I don't think I would want to be in your family group chats but regardless I'm specifically talking about huge public/semi-public spaces. > The problem here is that because of journalists like these we now have to prepare to defend Telegram against authorities Look this shit sucks. It's terrible that the same group of awful people that seem to poison everything they touch have been flocking to different corners of the internet trying to find a place that won't kick them out to self organize. As Facebook/Twitter/Reddit have shown you don't actually have to get rid of them at large just make a good-faith attempt.
  • dogman144 6y ago
    God I'm pretty lefty but "problematic" is becoming... problematic. On top of that, just completely asinine tech reporting is becoming problematic. Bloomberg supermicro? Never retracted, lead reporter on it is now BBG's cyber reporting czar. NYT's NSA hacked Baltimore author? Came out with that smooth brained "Jetbrains == SolarWinds" story. The wear and tear from a complex field only getting more complex, it governing a larger and growing share of our civil society, and already substantial roadblocks to explaining the layman "how to HTML," is really, really, really showing these days. Sorry for the rant. I work in infosec, and this dynamic has been brewing for a while. Once the "r/WSB, a sometimes alt-right subreddit for stock trading" stories started hitting from all the otherwise top tier news outlets, I lost it finally. I'm not barking up a MSM tree, but legitimately when and how does this dynamic start to change? It's getting absurd.
    • call_me_dana 6y ago
      When we see the rise of citizen journalism and independent media. Mainstream media is completely biased and not trustable. Matt Taibbi keeps stressing the need for a unbiased news site but if it has corporate backing, it will eventually become compromised.
      • dogman144 6y ago
        I think I am with you on your first sentence being a way forward. Substack is pretty interesting in that regard. I run into some issues with your use of Taibbi as a good anecdote though for unbiased reporting, and I won't touch your MSM comment. I think Taibbi is a competent, honest, and candid reporter. That said, I was around during his coverage of GS in the Rolling Stone in '08-'09. Is he good at speaking truth to power and creating compelling narratives? Yes. But he's biased in his coverage in the same way that Greenwald is. I don't necessarily agree with blurring* the line between OpEd and reporting is the direction that solves the disconnect. Additionally, honest, citizen journalists with independent funding can misunderstand tech the same way a NYT reporter can. It's still a complex field only getting more complex.
        • 6y ago
  • LudwigNagasena 6y ago
    >the Times’ tech team quickly donned their hall-monitor goggles and Stasi notebooks to warn that the Bad People had migrated to Signal and Telegram. This week they asked: “Are Private Messaging Apps the Next Misinformation Hot Spot?” I hope they mean “the next” after traditional media.
  • Camillo 6y ago
    > Do it if $5 is pocket money for you. If not for this then for something else he have done. But what if in a few years Greenwald falls (further) from grace and you find yourself in hot water for having financed him? Better use a prepaid card.
    • eitland 6y ago
      At some point one has to stand up for something. Everyone else should of course feel free to use a prepaid card.
  • seventytwo 6y ago
    Unreal. If the so-called watchmen of the “MSM” even for a second tired to meet the standards in their own writing that they hold for others, they’d be crushed. This goes triple for the biased “journalist” in the OP. It’s so gross to see someone like this snipe and cherry pick examples from the vast, vast media system, and then have otherwise smart people take the bait because thinking it’s some enlightened, contrarian position. It’s just a way to sell ads to the “ackshyually...” crowd.
• motohagiography 6y ago
  He's right. When I started writing in the 90's, there was an idea of journalism as telling stories in the principled defence of minority interests and as a public check on institutional power, but it has mutated into the unhinged and corrupt prosecution of deviance from official narrative lines. Social media is just a way for neighbours to denounce one another in a new snitch culture that rivals any 20th century system. I'm usually a couple of years ahead of the curve on trends, and I even dropped Slack last year because it's not a place for real discourse.
  • stonogo 6y ago
    That's funny, because what I remember about journalism in the 80s was a common sense of confusion and dismay that the job of a journalist had mutated from "reporting facts" to "telling stories" -- specifically I remember polls of graduating journalism majors; for the first time the claimed motivation for choosing the field was "changing the world."
  • SamBam 6y ago
    > ...from official narrative lines I always laugh at this. Which "official narrative lines?" During the Trump administration, many people complained that all journalism was too anti-Trump, and anti-Trump voters (who voted in the majority in 2016). So was this "prosecution" of the views of the party in power by journalists enforcing the "official narrative," or against it? Was it defending the minority's interests or the majority's? Somehow, everyone has it in their minds that "PC culture" is the real official line, no matter who is in power. This is how, when all the social media apps were censoring Trump, everyone just accepted the perception that it was big-government censoring the little people, even though it was literally censoring the people in power.
  • personlurking 6y ago
    >there was an idea of journalism as telling stories in the principled defence of minority interests and as a public check on institutional power To “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”, as it were.
  • newacct583 6y ago
• TameAntelope 6y ago
  The tone of this article is atrocious, if Glenn had a point it was completely lost when he peppered this article with snark and derision. He clearly holds disgust for his subject, which ruins his ability to speak impartially about this topic. This is an attempted hit piece and he's not subtle about it, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised, he's never been very adept at objectivity or impartiality. I'm honestly surprised more folks haven't seen through his shtick yet, as they saw through Taibbi's.
  • babesh 6y ago
    A classic strategy is to attack the messenger instead of the message. You are doing this. There isn’t one fact in your statement. Pure opinion and feeling. Greenwald peppers his article with disgust but he also backs it up with facts.
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    • jameslk 6y ago
      I'm not sure why this comment is getting downvoted and flagged. The point is valid. This is an ad hominem attack with non sequiturs too like "He clearly holds disgust for his subject, which ruins his ability to speak" It's contentless and cheap. I'd like to hear some counterarguments to Glen's points instead.
      • TameAntelope 6y ago
        It's only an ad hominem if I say he's wrong because of who he is. This can't be an ad hominem if I don't actually address the argument he puts forward, which I did not do (for better or for worse). The content I've added is, "This article is hard for me to read because of its tone." Agree or disagree, I found it difficult to get through, and hard to see what Glenn was trying to point out as a result of the tone he chose. Am I not allowed to comment on an article's tone?
• deadalus 6y ago
  Is Substack a good option for the amateur writer trying to make a email list for free while creating valuable content ; or is it better suited for someone with a large fan following like Greenwald?
• choeger 6y ago
  From the outside, if a society fires their best reporters because they use a "forbidden word" it is already over the edge. Everything else that will probably follow (reeducation camps, etc.) is barely driven by momentum. In the end, there will be a revolution. Given the fervor of the zealots, it will probably be a violent one.
• medicineman 6y ago
  So when you post the Times, you are posting the bien pensant view. Literally, unequivocally, and for all time, you are posting the NPC instruction manual for right think on any particular issue.
• endymi0n 6y ago
  It's interesting how polemic Greenwald has become, bringing with it the same magnitude of reality denial as the actors he is going after. A title like "The Journalistic Tattletale and Censorship Industry Suffers Several Well-Deserved Blows" coming from an investigative journalist like himself really sounds like a sore loser's version of "investigative journalism needs to die if it doesn't share my narrative and political opinion." I used to be a free speech absolutist myself back in Snowden times, but having seeing the flip side of anonymous, unverified, amplified and maliciously orchestrated communication of lies by unknown actors myself over the past few years, his ad-hominem attacks and inexact comparisons surely lack the subtleness this topic demands.
  • vippy 6y ago
    It fascinates me how we've gone from the web as a tool for resisting censorship to the point where we recognize the need for guardrails because of how dangerous information tools can be made in the wrong hands.
    • vippy 6y ago
      Downvote me all you want, I'm not wrong: information defenses are a matter of national security. https://www.hsdl.org/c/tactics-and-tropes-of-the-internet-research-agency/ https://www.hsdl.org/c/tactics-and-tropes-of-the-internet-re...
  • neonate 6y ago
    He's always been that way, having started out as a polemical blogger, and before that as a litigator.
  • LMYahooTFY 6y ago
    Become? As far as I can tell Greenwald has been writing polemics since his journalistic genesis, and it's not clear why this is negative. What made you withdraw from an absolute position on free speech?
  • tootie 6y ago
    He has absolutely always been like this. His rambling screeds used to be posted to reddit pretty constantly long before he published Snowden. This NYT reporter made a mistake and posted an incorrect accusation on her twitter, that she later corrected. Big mistake, but she owned it. And here he is calling the situation "Stasi-like".
• bmmayer1 6y ago
  > "But this is now the prevailing ethos in corporate journalism. They have insufficient talent or skill, and even less desire, to take on real power centers: the military-industrial complex, the CIA and FBI, the clandestine security state, Wall Street, Silicon Valley monopolies, the corrupted and lying corporate media outlets they serve. So settling on this penny-ante, trivial bullshit — tattling, hall monitoring, speech policing: all in the most anti-intellectual, adolescent and primitive ways — is all they have. It’s all they are. It’s why they have fully earned the contempt and distrust in which the public holds them." This should be the real concern: that journalism may be dedicated (and some would say, specifically incentivized) to performing non-valuable work, at the expense of valuable work the public needs journalists to perform. In this media landscape, everyone loses except for the people with actual power, who gain more. Where does this lead? And how much of this nonsense is driven or encouraged by the very establishment that journalists are supposed to be keeping in check?
  • jakelazaroff 6y ago
    Very ironic that this sentence was planted in the middle of a 3000-word screed comparing someone who tweeted a misheard quote to the Stasi.
    • alentist 6y ago
      Stasi-like citizen-surveillance. And there's nothing ironic about it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26070324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26070324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26069728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26069728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26070040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26070040
      • jakelazaroff 6y ago
        The irony is that this piece is, to use Glenn’s words, “penny-ante, trivial bullshit”. Again, it’s a 3,000 word polemic rant in response to… a mistaken allegation in a tweet. It’s not speaking truth to power. It’s not shedding light on corruption. It’s just Glenn up on his high horse, spewing the same boring right-wing outragebait that he’s peddled for years.
• eruci 6y ago
  He's right! HN is next.
• the_gastropod 6y ago
  The NYT is hardly beyond criticism. But Greenwald's whole schtick these past few years has been little more than a more articulate Trumpian "the press is the enemy of the people" anti-intellectual nonsense. I don't think Greenwald is a Russian agent. But it's hard to imagine a Russian agent behaving a whole lot differently, if their motive was to sow discord and distrust in our most historically credible institutions.
  • babesh 6y ago
    Such a classic attack. I am not accusing him of being the enemy but he sure acts like one.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • filoleg 6y ago
    I would argue that the examples of "journalism" critiqued in that article are more in line with what an enemy would act like. Pretending otherwise feels like blaming Snowden for exposing certain unlawful things that NSA has been doing. Except with Snowden, there is at least a non-zero-value argument against him when it comes to exposing secrets related to national security (even though I, along with many other people, don't see him as the real bad guy in that whole story). While those "journalists", like Taylor Lorenz, don't have even that excuse on their side.
  • ta8645 6y ago
    > if their motive was to sow discord and distrust in our most historically credible institutions. Those very institutions are doing exactly that to themselves. It's easy to ignore if they mostly comport with your own worldview. But to anyone who goes against the grain at all, it's starkly obvious that these institutions have become little more than propaganda machines for the dominant narrative.
    • abacadaba 6y ago
      Seeing the same people who go on and on about [mildly conservative channel] fake news and laughing at the idiots who watch it while also being completely oblivious to the exact same bs they're lapping up day after day has been outright depressing.
• jamestimmins 6y ago
  1. Greenwald weakens his point by conflating different types of reporting as one type of "hall monitoring". First he focuses on journalists who write about disinformation. For example, he links to a piece discussing how InfoWars and similar outlets game the social media algorithms to get views and how they aren't stopped at all. But to compare that type of journalism, against disinformation sources who have repeatedly and purposefully put out fake news that has lead to considerable harm and even death because of the number of people that believe the falsehoods, with telling on Marc Andreessen, is a strange argument. The second part of his argument is quite strong! There is a weird obsession with finding and calling out people whose opinions and words are out of line with accepted mainstream beliefs. But I don't understand why the first part was included in this piece. It makes the whole thing come across as petty, despite the valid arguments. 2. He condescendingly uses "millennial" as a pejorative, which is unnecessary and exhausting. It's also bad writing. 3. This line, "Jezebel (which really ought to just change its name to You’re a Misogynist, since it has no other content)", is objectively hilarious, regardless of its accuracy.
• verall 6y ago
  I'm gonna be honest, I don't like "tattletale media" either, and I wanted to read this article, but, wow. Other comments are calling it "subtle", I'm finding it pretty hard to read: > primary objectives are control, censorship, and the destruction of reputations for fun and power Primary objective is clicks/outrage, "WHO said WHAT?" is a big driver of outrage/"angry media" > The little crew of tattletale millennials assembled by NBC — who refer to their twerpy work... Wow... A lot of vitriol here. No attempts at nuance or any understanding of why lies and misinformation can be dangerous, or how to respond to misinformation with discussion and correction rather than censorship. Just anger.
• iaabtpbtpnn 6y ago
  No wonder this guy can't hold down a job.
• shadowgovt 6y ago
  It seems counter-productive to me for journalists to call for spaces like this to be taken down. Far more valuable to them should be to leave them up, set up their own account, and lurk. Online fora where people believe they are chatting privately or psudonymously are the ultimate honeypot for teasing out things they would never say in public. I recall the time Mitt Romney was outed by an anonymous recorder who divulged several things he said during a high-ticket fundraiser that did poorly for his messaging on the campaign trail in 2012 (https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/top-13-quotes-mitt-romneys-leaked-fundraiser-video/story?id=17264969 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/top-13-quotes-mitt-romn...).
• lhnz 6y ago
  Interestingly, China blocked access to Clubhouse today [0]. Even though our censors are annoying, at least they're less effective. Actually, they appear less effective, but could it be that they're better because they're more subtle? Are we absolutely sure that the media elite doesn't ever conspire with those in the government towards particular goals? [0] https://twitter.com/paulmozur/status/1358745066915860481 https://twitter.com/paulmozur/status/1358745066915860481
  • xxpor 6y ago
    Not shocking, there was a big twitter thread yesterday talking about a conversation between Mainland Han Chinese, Uighurs and Taiwanese all on the same call talking about various things.
• jacquesm 6y ago
  Flagging this. Greenwald has totally lost the plot.
  • eplanit 6y ago
    In the spirit of the article, shouldn't he be banned or fired?
    • deathlight 6y ago
      But also, isn't criticizing him an example of latent homophobia? Is this a medical condition we can get people labeled with so they can be involuntarily committed for expressing views we don't agree with?
• mindvirus 6y ago
  This guilt by association is really scary (and a trial by mob). And it doesn't seem to even matter if the accusor is telling the truth - as long as they have enough Twitter followers, they can wreck someone's life. How do we get out of this though? It seems a big return to anonymity will happen, along with decentralization.
• nickelcitymario 6y ago
  He criticizes other journalists for being singularly focused on calling out “bad behaviour”, but has anyone made a bigger career out of doing exactly that than Greenwald? It’s hypocritical. I’m not even saying he’s factually wrong (I don’t have the interest in fact checking him). I’m just saying that every time he writes anything, he can’t help but draw comparisons to fascism. Yes, it’s helpful to reference fascism when witnessing truly fascist things. I, too, am opposed to fascism. But that’s hardly an interesting or controversial position. Yet everything Glenn doesn’t like seems to be a part of either a grand conspiracy or a symptom of said conspiracy. Dude is off his rocker.
• renewiltord 6y ago
  It must surely be some Internet Law that people who spend most of their time in bubbles where they converse with the worst of their opponents make the worst arguments to people outside the bubble. So, if you take an otherwise decent smart person and place her in a spot where all her enemies are vitriolic morons, she will start to apply vitriolic rhetoric. Bring this person out of that universe and into the normal world and she will continue to act as if she is speaking to that subset. However, the normal world now sees only her polemic, not what she is reacting to. You can use this technique very effectively to turn normal people into weird people. Surround them temporarily with enemies who are violent-sounding morons and then return them to the general world. It's the equivalent of everyone in a parking lot parking over the lines and then forcing the last guy into a space where he has to park over the lines. Then you leave, and everyone else coming in thinks this one guy is the asshole. Of course, reading the article he is actually absolutely correct about these Hall Monitor scarlet letter "label the witch" people.
  • vorpalhex 6y ago
    "He who battles with monsters must take care that he does not become one..." - Nietzsche Social media incentivizes controversial takes. Real people tend to be more in the middle. Never confuse social media for real life.
    • duxup 6y ago
      >Social media incentivizes controversial takes. I worry it is trending to all media now. The local media around me keep covering someone who 'may run for governor' and his ignorant antics... Sometimes it's the same 'thinking of running' story again and again. As far as I can tell he hasn't even taken step 1 to actually run, other than wrap the media around his finger to give him free attention. Beyond that anyone else who might run, no coverage at all...
    • afavour 6y ago
      > Never confuse social media for real life. Maybe that was true years ago but I really don't know that it is today. Social media is the primary means of communication for a lot of people and in a very real sense it is real life. I'd argue the Capitol riot in January is an example of social media becoming very real. Even the topic at hand - /r/wallstreetbets and $GME - shows the same.
• dang 6y ago
  I've attempted to make the title more factual and neutral, in keeping with the HN guidelines.
• originalvichy 6y ago
  And ironically, Greenwald stoops low on their level to fight in the mud with pigs instead of focusing on more relevant things. The internet and Twitter have amplification feedback loops which means that the best way to handle this stuff is to not interact and promote it by giving it more eyes. Ever since a feminist gamer started pointing out sexist oddities from video games and my fellow video game enthusiasts got their panties in a bunch and started a hate machine against her, I've seen this pattern repeat itself again and again. Stop giving them the notoriety and eyes and they would have disappeared 5 years ago.
  • tux1968 6y ago
    > ...my fellow video game enthusiasts got their panties in a bunch and started a hate machine against her... It's really hard to resist the temptation to fight in the mud isn't it? Flippantly casting aspersions like this one is so easy.
• wilg 6y ago
  There's probably some portion of a reasonable point buried somewhere in here, but boy is he going out of his way to make the reader distrust him!
• S_A_P 6y ago
  Greenwalds tactics aside, do we really consider someone saying the word "retard" in a private discussion newsworthy? More importantly it wasnt even reported correctly and appears to be the result of Taylor Lorenz having an axe to grind with Marc Andreessen.
  • kgog 6y ago
    To me, the bigger story (like the one NYT actually published) is around content moderation. Clubhouse has risen fast - in terms of users and valuation - but has done very little vis-a-vis moderation. Every single social platform started out where they started and eventually had to moderate bad actors and bad actions. Greenwald used to do good journalism. And now sells subscriptions to dog-whistles.
  • kenjackson 6y ago
    AS far as I can tell, it wasn’t even a news story. It was a tweet. And then later clarified after brought to her attention. I find it hard to believe that it justifies this long blog. This is the first thing I’ve seen him wrote in years. And it is horrible.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • S_A_P 6y ago
      You are correct in that, but I don't know that there is much difference any more. Tweets are in TV news/News websites all the time. The fact that it is a pretty well known journalist will likely hold much more weight with some folks.
    • gnicholas 6y ago
      > it wasn’t even a news story. It was a tweet. If this had turned out to be true, it surely would have sparked several news stories. The reason that such a long post by Greenwald was warranted is that the journalist was clearly trying to create a story with the tweet.
• fasteddie31003 6y ago
  God I love the "R" word. It has just the right amount of edge that people's ears perk up just a little bit when you say it and then they start paying attention.
• dingoegret 6y ago
  I used to be a free speech absolutist, but after seeing just how a massive number of people can be convinced of some seriously dangerous but factually incorrect political ideas off of nothing more than memes, it changed my view. It was time to admit that social media wasn't a simple town square. People engaged with millions of other people need to be treated with even more checks and balances than a journalist with a fraction of that engagement.
• jhpriestley 6y ago
  "They have insufficient talent or skill, and even less desire, to take on real power centers" funny line in a story that's basically just twitter/clubhouse drama
  • kgog 6y ago
    Imagine writing 3000 words - while simultaneously decrying that you're censored - because you're mad at someone's tweet.
• at_a_remove 6y ago
  This sounds similar to the subreddit whose members post "CP" to subreddits they do not like in order to get them taken down. We should be talking about the false accusation and false accusations in general, but it is probably easier to talk about the messenger.
• betwixthewires 6y ago
  If NYT or any big dinosaur media company has any shred of integrity left they'll fire and blacklist every single so called journalist engaging in this sort of behavior. They represent your brand, their behavior is your behavior. It reflects on every other employee you have, including any presumably honest ones. If you're an honest journalist and you work for one of these companies, know that their behavior makes me and millions of others distrust you, they're making the most important company on your resume into a hindrance, you need to demand that these people be fired, if not for any reason than to save your own reputation.
  • kgog 6y ago
    Does that mean your employer should fire you for your HN comments and tweets from personal accounts?
    • disgruntledphd2 6y ago
      The HN hive mind appears to believe that if all the HN readers in the world refuse to work for companies that they don't like, then a new age of love, peace and libertarianism will dawn across the world.
    • betwixthewires 6y ago
      A person with a blue checkmark on Twitter verifies themselves to give themselves professional legitimacy. Especially considering that in the example we are discussing, the person's profession is to reach people and share words, associating their publicly shared words with their professional life is not beyond the pail. They've associated their name with their job, not me.
      • kgog 6y ago
        Is that a yes or a no?
        • betwixthewires 6y ago
          I've very clearly made a distinction between the two scenarios, but if you need me to draw it for you in crayons, it is a "no".
• habosa 6y ago
  After a few pages the article gets past Greenwalds hatred for the NYT and eventually makes an interesting point (which I'll quote without further comment): "Beyond all this, what if he had used the word “retarded”? What would it mean? If someone uses that term maliciously, as a slur against others to mock their intellect, it is certainly reasonable to condemn that. Used with that intent and in that context, it is unnecessarily hurtful for people who suffer diseases of cognitive impairment. But that is not remotely what happened here. Anyone who spent any time at all on the sub-Reddit thread of r/WallStreetBets knows that “retards” was the single most common term used by those who short-squeezed the hedge funds invested in the collapse of GameStop. It is virtually impossible to discuss the ethos of that subculture without using that term. This was one of their most popular battlecries: “We can stay retarded longer than you can stay solvent.” And the use of that term in the sub-Reddit was not just ubiquitous but fascinating: layered with multiple levels of irony and self-deprecation. Sociologists could, and should, study how that term was deployed by those Redditors and what role it played in forming the community that enabled them to strike a blow against these hedge funds. It reflected their self-perceived place at the bottom of social hierarchies, expressed the irony that they as unsophisticated investors were defeating self-perceived financial wizards, and marked their culture and community as transgressive. Did some use it with malice? Maybe. But there was vast complexity to it."
• chipotle_coyote 6y ago
  So, an NYT reporter snooping on a Clubhouse conversation got her facts wrong (although she later corrected them), and the entire thing seemed relatively trivial to start with. And... this is exhibit A for the prosecution about how no one is doing real journalism anymore, they're just playing hall monitor. Or turning into the modern Stasi. Sure, those two things don't seem very similar, but we always forget how the SS started out as elementary school crossing guards, don't we. Okay, Glenn, we get it. You don't like -- say it with me in your spookiest voice, everyone! -- CAAAAAAAANCELLLL CUUUUUUUUUUULTURRRRRE. I mean, sure, it was fine when they were cancelling Bari Weiss, because he was on board with that, but then they came for him! (And by "they," I mean fact-checkers, or as I believe Greenwald refers to them, Paramilitary Death Squads.) I'm just saying, maybe we should stop treating "but he's the guy that Edward Snowden worked with!" as some kind of Get Out of Making Sensible Arguments Free card.
  • baryphonic 6y ago
    > So, an NYT reporter snooping on a Clubhouse conversation got her facts wrong (although she later corrected them), and the entire thing seemed relatively trivial to start with. And... this is exhibit A for the prosecution about how no one is doing real journalism anymore, they're just playing hall monitor. Or turning into the modern Stasi. Sure, those two things don't seem very similar, but we always forget how the SS started out as elementary school crossing guards, don't we. Taylor Lorenz is apparently so focused on Marc Andreesen blocking her on Clubhouse that she admitted (in another since-deleted tweet)[1] that she had created a "burner" account, a violation of Clubhouse rules ("We [Clubhouse] prohibit the creation of duplicate or multiple accounts by one individual, whether representing themselves or another entity")[2]. She has a long history of tweeting at Andreesen on Twitter about her block. An argument that she's simply a neutral reporter soberly seeking out "abuse" and "harassment" strains credibility (especially given that her behavior toward Andreesen on Twitter is actually harassment). How would you characterize an organization that sends its agents out to harass and stalk perceived enemies, trying to catch them in any act that can be portrayed as wrongdoing or wrongthink, and even going so far as to spread demonstrable lies about them? Stasi seems only mildly hyperbolic. [1] https://twitter.com/webdevMason/status/1358349374749769730 https://twitter.com/webdevMason/status/1358349374749769730 [2] https://www.notion.so/Community-Guidelines-461a6860abda41649e17c34dc1dd4b5f https://www.notion.so/Community-Guidelines-461a6860abda41649...
• parsimo2010 6y ago
  Some thoughts on the bigger picture- 1: Really? Do you have to write "r-word" instead of "retard" when you're writing about someone saying something? What if Marc literally said "r-word" and I'm vastly underestimating how woke this reporter is? Wait, I have a solution. Use the actual word that a person said when quoting them. Just write the exact sentence where you think Marc said the word retard. Nobody should prosecute you for quoting someone without endorsing their opinion. Obfuscating your reporting to avoid a word is bad writing style. 1.5: Otherwise, the above seems to limit us to 26 taboo slurs in the English language. A-word, b-word, c-word, ... There are other rude words, but there can only be a single r-word so bad that I mustn't spell it. To prevent confusion, I have to completely spell/say the rest of the r-words. What I'm getting at is whole thing of not saying a word is silly. Everyone knows that the c-word means cunt (at least in the USA). If this wasn't common knowledge then you couldn't say c-word and have everyone know what you meant. (Who decided that cunt was a worse word than chink anyway? That's marginalizing Chinese people and totally not-woke. /s) 2. There are people that exaggerate and sensationalize something to get more views. Some people are even fine trying to ruin someone's reputation. But we are getting wise to these sorts of things. If it's an isolated event these things kind of go away. Even if Marc is on record once saying "retard" he's probably not a bad guy. Just from growing up in the 90's I've easily said it a thousand times. If I start to hear several other instances accusing Marc of using a slur and saying it in a hurtful manner then I'll revisit the issue.
  • djrogers 6y ago
    There's a minor problem with your 1st item above - the quote she was (mis)attributing to Marc was actually a quote from DFV on /r/wallstreetbets. If she had use the word in her quote of his quote, it would have damaged her narrative. The fact is that in her tweet and subsequent non-apology when corrected she went out of her way to paper over the context of this being a quote of DFV. She claimed the word was used 'casually' as if it was directed at someone or a group rather than quoting someone who was referring to himself...
  • mdoms 6y ago
    Reminds me of a Louis CK bit where he says that when you say "n-word" you're not saying the n-word but you're making ME say it in my head.
• mensetmanusman 6y ago
  The NYT reorganization that transformed it into an UltraWoke 5000 reporting machine is starting to bear fruit.
• sleepybrett 6y ago
  Wait, do people still believe anything glen greenwald says?
  • danaos 6y ago
    Wait, do people still believe anything NYT says?
    • yeetawayhn 6y ago
      Unless you want to be a heretic.
• geraldalewis 6y ago
  Reporters like Brandy Zadrozny and Ben Collins were writing about the threats extremists were making before Jan 6th. That's not "junior high hall-monitor tattling"; that's reportage that I wish more people would have taken seriously. Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/violent-threats-ripple-through-far-right-internet-forums-ahead-protest-n1252923 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/violent-threats-ripple...
• mongol 6y ago
  One of the best Swedish journalists I know is not on Twitter. I found it annoying at first as I wanted to follow him, interact with him and so on. But I now think it adds a lot to his credibility. It seems however quite rare. Every journalist seems to build a personal brand and gather a following that follows them to wherever they write. In the same vein, I really appreciate The Economist for it's unsigned articles. Basically, I trust journalism more when the journalist does not put themselves between me and the subject of their writings.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• okprod 6y ago
  Interning at Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting in my youth was worthwhile. Mis/disinformation, mass media, and the power/biases of tech corporations to manipulate is a problem. But this case isn't "journalism" anymore than tabloid garbage. I also expected more from a Berkman Klein affiliate.
• Jkvngt 6y ago
  She’s doing everybody a favor, in truth. Journalisms been dead for decades and Big Tech needs to punish all of us until we abandon it.
• MrYellowP 6y ago
  Does no one else recognize that the US are slipping into totalitarianism also because of assholes like her? It already is a borderline fascist country, the last steps aren't too far off.
• 7174n6 6y ago
  Almost as an aside, he mentions the need for "content". The 24 hours news cycle and proliferation of Internet based news sources has created an insatiable need for content. These media personalities are so desperate for something to "report" that they will literally do anything to create it. The derogatory use of terms meant to slur a person with limited mental capacity is obviously poor taste and maybe offensive, but is it news? Is that what a "reporter" with a national audience should be focusing on? The news business is in desperate need of constriction.
  • ravenstine 6y ago
    News for the most part is a scam. Yes, I'm using the word "scam" in its loosest sense but, depending on the news outlet, the intention is to commit a borderline scam. Just live a month never reading or watching the news and you'll realize how worthless most news actually is. The scam is to churn out tons of content so that more ads are seen, and the "news" has to actively convince its readers to take poorly-developed news items very seriously so they keep coming back. Focusing on petty drivel like something offensive someone said achieves this end very easily, as was demonstrated by Facebook's own A/B tests. In essence, the news must incorporate exaggerations and misrepresentations in order to make the kind of profits they want to see. That's only the layer we can see. What we can't see are the incentives that entertainment giants place upon their news outlets to publish the "accurate" truth. The problem with economies that value growth over almost everything else is that the constriction you refer to is much less likely to happen. When currency is flying, insolvent or barely solvent businesses such as the news industry can continue to plug along seemingly indefinitely. That notwithstanding, the news is a loss leader for much more powerful entities that need to shape the hearts and minds of the public to their benefit. I don't see much constriction happening any time soon beyond some companies being sold to others.
• Lammy 6y ago
  > Like some creepy informant for a state security apparatus I really admire his restraint with what he’s trying to convey here despite how many people will miss reading between the lines.
  • filoleg 6y ago
    > I really admire his restraint with what he’s trying to convey here despite how many people will miss reading between the lines. It wasn't that subtle, to be honest, given the author even says "Stasi-like citizen surveillance" (and in general references Stasi multiple times throughout the article), clearly alluding to what you think he is alluding. But I agree with you, I believe even something not-so-subtle like this will be missed by the overwhelming majority. Really well-written and well-sourced article. Glad to see someone managing to write something that is pleasant and fun to read, while, at the same time, cutting straight through all the bs with no debris of fluff to just pad up the article. EDIT: found an even better/more illustrative quote in the article - "The participants in Clubhouse have tried to block these tattletale reporters from eavesdropping on their private conversations precisely because they see themselves as Stasi agents whose function is to report people for expressing prohibited ideas even in private conservations"
    • jamestimmins 6y ago
      Perhaps I'm dense, but what is he alluding to? Beyond a communist/1984-like system where everyone informs on each other?
      • filoleg 6y ago
        I don't think you are missing anything substantial. While you might have missed the actual historical names and details, you got the idea right. Stasi is just a commonly used name for the Ministry of State Security in Soviet-occupied East Germany post-WW2. Which was known for creating those kinds of systems where it would be commonplace for people to snitch on their family and friends for as much as wrongthink. On a more fundamental/deeper level, from my understanding, he is alluding to those systems and how regular people would all tattletale on each other voluntarily and out of some misguided conviction and belief in the system (except instead of getting canceled on twitter, they would get gulag'd instead). Without realizing that the system was not their friend and that they themselves were extremely likely to end up next on the chopping block the day after.