5 ms·

The Guardian has in 200 years only won one Pulitzer, for Glenn Greenwald's reporting on intelligence agency wiretapping and other malfeasance. And what does the

by gizmo 5y ago

The Guardian has in 200 years only won one Pulitzer, for Glenn Greenwald's reporting on intelligence agency wiretapping and other malfeasance. And what does the Guardian do? They repeatedly malign Greenwald and publish falsehoods about him. See this thread for a typical example: https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1388826988736126976 https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1388826988736126976 The problem isn't just that the Guardian gets major stuff wrong, and that they don't -- as a matter of course -- acknowledge mistakes. The big, no huge, problem is that they do almost no real journalism whatsoever. (I can also pick nits about this article that getting global cooling wrong and asbestos doesn't mean anything because those were mundane mistakes that are not indicative of a larger problem, but I'd rather focus on the big picture that The Guardian doesn't do real journalism and the big things they get wrong as a consequence they never acknowledge, not even in articles like these.) edit: bonus link about how the Guardian silences and fires journalists who tweet sarcastically about sensitive topics. Thread: https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1359544245238005760 https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1359544245238005760

pmyteh 5y ago
Given that the Pulitzers are only given for work that appears in a US publication, that's not terribly surprising. And saying that the Guardian 'doesn't do real journalism' is fundamentally unserious. I have huge problems with their editorial decision-making, and their attitudes to a number of issues I know about and care deeply about. But they are a serious newspaper, doing far better journalism than the vast majority of other papers. In the UK they are one of only a few still making even a pretence of being proper journalists. The fact that they are as reluctant as anyone else to issue mea culpas, and have decided that Greenwald is a crank, doesn't change that.
- koheripbal 5y ago
  I think it's pretty fair to say The Guardian doesn't do any investigative journalism. If you look at almost any front page article in the last x years, you will be hard pressed to find anything that isn't purely interviews and sound bytes regurgitated from other sources.
- gizmo 5y ago
  I'll concede that they occasionally do real journalism, but they also publish falsehoods and they either don't retract/correct at all or quietly edit published articles. Their fact-checking is awful, and you can just see on twitter how they deal with that. To me that's disqualifying, but you do you. Greenwald's journalism in Brazil has gotten Lula out of prison. Lula is likely to run for president, and that might change future of the country. The impact of the journalism Greenwald does is hard to overstate. What does it tell you about the Guardian that they dismiss him as a crank?
matthewmorgan 5y ago
How absurd, a 200 year old British paper only winning one American award that was only founded in the 20th century.
- collyw 5y ago
  It started out as a UK newspaper but it has had an international presence for a while now (admittedly a small part of that 200 years).
polskibus 5y ago
Who does real journalism in your opinion? BBC ? NYT ? What's focused on facts these days and not on opinions anc clickbait ?
GlennS 5y ago
This is interesting. I would have said the opposite. My opinion was that the Guardian is only worthwhile because it occasionally does some very good journalism, and that just about outweighs the pointless bullshit. I don't really have anything to back that up though, just a general impression from reading it. So it's interesting to hear some evidence to the contrary. I have no idea if the Pulitzer is actually a good measure though. A point of comparison: look at the Economist, which does basically no investigative journalism, but does produce fairly sensible opinion pieces (of course from a particular viewpoint, often a bit limited in their vision).
uniqueid 5y ago
My impression of Glenn Greenwald is that he is either paranoid, or willing to stoke his readers' paranoia in order to attract attention. This seems like standard behavior for Greenwald: https://twitter.com/themattdimitri/status/1389693713912369170 https://twitter.com/themattdimitri/status/138969371391236917... It's the same refrain as always: 'everyone is out to get me!'
- bavell 5y ago
  I don't care for Glenn too much but he's better than a lot of the other crappy grifters out there like the tool in the thread you linked to.
  - uniqueid 5y ago
    but he's better than a lot of the other crappy grifters A journalist should neither accuse, without evidence, someone else of being a 'DNC operative', nor claim, without verifying, that that person opposes a particular political candidate. The gravity of slandering someone that way, to me, is self-evident. It doesn't matter if the person he slanders is a saint or a piece of garbage. If the person whose tweet I linked is truly a 'tool' (and I'm open to that possibility), then Greenwald could just have left it at calling him a 'worm'. That's fair game since it's a matter of opinion.
    - bavell 5y ago
      I agree and disagree. He definitely wasn't very professional in his remarks and could have toned it down but in that clip Glenn said exactly why he thinks that way. And this was on a podcast (i.e. his personal opinion), not an article posted to a news outlet. The 'tool' even did exactly what Glenn accused him of on that thread, taking short clips of people he doesn't like out of context and disparaging them. Seems to be his MO. Again, I don't love Glenn but overall I feel he's decent and usually does actual journalism instead of playing silly games most of the time.
      - uniqueid 5y ago

by gizmo 5y ago

pmyteh 5y ago

Given that the Pulitzers are only given for work that appears in a US publication, that's not terribly surprising. And saying that the Guardian 'doesn't do real journalism' is fundamentally unserious. I have huge problems with their editorial decision-making, and their attitudes to a number of issues I know about and care deeply about. But they are a serious newspaper, doing far better journalism than the vast majority of other papers. In the UK they are one of only a few still making even a pretence of being proper journalists. The fact that they are as reluctant as anyone else to issue mea culpas, and have decided that Greenwald is a crank, doesn't change that.

koheripbal 5y ago
I think it's pretty fair to say The Guardian doesn't do any investigative journalism. If you look at almost any front page article in the last x years, you will be hard pressed to find anything that isn't purely interviews and sound bytes regurgitated from other sources.
gizmo 5y ago
I'll concede that they occasionally do real journalism, but they also publish falsehoods and they either don't retract/correct at all or quietly edit published articles. Their fact-checking is awful, and you can just see on twitter how they deal with that. To me that's disqualifying, but you do you. Greenwald's journalism in Brazil has gotten Lula out of prison. Lula is likely to run for president, and that might change future of the country. The impact of the journalism Greenwald does is hard to overstate. What does it tell you about the Guardian that they dismiss him as a crank?

matthewmorgan 5y ago

How absurd, a 200 year old British paper only winning one American award that was only founded in the 20th century.

collyw 5y ago
It started out as a UK newspaper but it has had an international presence for a while now (admittedly a small part of that 200 years).

polskibus 5y ago

Who does real journalism in your opinion? BBC ? NYT ? What's focused on facts these days and not on opinions anc clickbait ?

GlennS 5y ago

This is interesting. I would have said the opposite. My opinion was that the Guardian is only worthwhile because it occasionally does some very good journalism, and that just about outweighs the pointless bullshit. I don't really have anything to back that up though, just a general impression from reading it. So it's interesting to hear some evidence to the contrary. I have no idea if the Pulitzer is actually a good measure though. A point of comparison: look at the Economist, which does basically no investigative journalism, but does produce fairly sensible opinion pieces (of course from a particular viewpoint, often a bit limited in their vision).

uniqueid 5y ago

My impression of Glenn Greenwald is that he is either paranoid, or willing to stoke his readers' paranoia in order to attract attention. This seems like standard behavior for Greenwald: https://twitter.com/themattdimitri/status/1389693713912369170 https://twitter.com/themattdimitri/status/138969371391236917... It's the same refrain as always: 'everyone is out to get me!'

bavell 5y ago
I don't care for Glenn too much but he's better than a lot of the other crappy grifters out there like the tool in the thread you linked to.
- uniqueid 5y ago
  but he's better than a lot of the other crappy grifters A journalist should neither accuse, without evidence, someone else of being a 'DNC operative', nor claim, without verifying, that that person opposes a particular political candidate. The gravity of slandering someone that way, to me, is self-evident. It doesn't matter if the person he slanders is a saint or a piece of garbage. If the person whose tweet I linked is truly a 'tool' (and I'm open to that possibility), then Greenwald could just have left it at calling him a 'worm'. That's fair game since it's a matter of opinion.
  - bavell 5y ago
    I agree and disagree. He definitely wasn't very professional in his remarks and could have toned it down but in that clip Glenn said exactly why he thinks that way. And this was on a podcast (i.e. his personal opinion), not an article posted to a news outlet. The 'tool' even did exactly what Glenn accused him of on that thread, taking short clips of people he doesn't like out of context and disparaging them. Seems to be his MO. Again, I don't love Glenn but overall I feel he's decent and usually does actual journalism instead of playing silly games most of the time.
    - uniqueid 5y ago