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The unfortunate question that keeps coming up in my head: does Glenn expect all the journalists of this new enterprise to be as good as him? If you look at his

The unfortunate question that keeps coming up in my head: does Glenn expect all the journalists of this new enterprise to be as good as him? If you look at his past articles, going back years before the Snowden leaks, he is clearly fluent in what he does. Being a former lawyer accounts for a good part of it. For example he never descends into "liberal vs conservative" "left vs right" semantics. He recognizes that these meaningless labels hinder discourse (even in this exchange, Keller tries to bait him into it, but Glenn doesn't budge). It also seems as if he has some kind of bank (a personal wiki? I must know!) of links to past articles and sources that he can pull from and sprinkle over his claims, a practice that makes for amazingly solid articles. Like another user said, I've been reading most everything he writes and tweets -- starting months before the Snowden leaks. I just trust that they're relevant to me as a US citizen 99% of the time. Few journalists are worthy of such trust.

droopyEyelids 13y ago
First off, I love Mr Greenwald, but I expect that other journalists will be much better than him and eventually surpass his lead. In my opinion, GG's strength lies in his clear-mindness, research skills, and instinctual opposition to bullshit. He has tremendous weaknesses in terms of hostility though. NOT that he calls a lie a lie, but instead he frequently both uses insults, and assumes malice. In writing for the public, especially if you hope to convince anyone of anything, those are huge mistakes. Glenn consistently calls things and people "stupid" (very little on earth is stupid, when it looks that way there are factors influencing the behavior you aren't accounting for, and addressing those factors has a far more persuasive effect than cursing the person who behaves under their influence as 'stupid'). Secondly, Mr Greenwald _very_ frequently implies people are behaving with malice. Malicious action is the worst thing you can accuse someone of; if a person is truly malicious they are beyond reason (because their reasoning ability tells them to hurt you.) Very few people on this planet operate with malice outside of the moments they're passionately enraged. Instead, tons of us hurt each other because we've been conditioned to do some action that has effects we don't acknowledge, because we're faced to choose between hurting ourselves or offloading it onto someone else and don't know how to do it better, or a similar reason. I believe Glenn will end up an editor, or in some senior position where his instinct informs other journalists where to look for stories, but as for the actual research and writing? To maintain the relationships you need with sources and the public, you have to understand the points I've written above, and Mr. Greenwald doesn't seem to show any tendency to move in that direction. (As an aside, I think this might be because of his courtroom training, where it's an adversarial system, or he is incredibly stressed out)
- selmnoo 13y ago
  Yes, sadly I too have noticed this behavior from Glenn, his tone quickly turns confrontational at times and this starts to pick at his credibility in the view of the audience. Someone should really explain this to him so he can make some corrective efforts on this.
  - bcoates 13y ago
    It's the outfit. If he looked like Spider Jerusalem everyone would be fine but he looks like a congressman so people expect more politesse than they get. I guess it's too much to expect Julian Assange levels of stagecraft from everybody.
  - nbevans 13y ago
    I saw an interview with him and the BBC a few weeks ago. When the subject of the UK came up he said he didn't care what they thought and he didn't care if he couldn't enter that country ever again because of what he believes is a hostile political system. He seems very willing to make enemies of entire countries which is an odd personality trait to say the least. I would think most westerners would be extremely distraught if, for some reason, they realised they could no longer visit the USA, UK, and numerous other major Western nations because of something they had done wrong.
    - a3n 13y ago
      "because of something they had done wrong." What has he done wrong?
      - jlgreco 13y ago
        Perhaps that 'they' is meant to refer to the country.
- detcader 13y ago
  First off, I'm not sure Greenwald could stop writing. He seems pretty addicted to it. Let's look at perhaps Greenwald's biggest article critical of a single individual in recent times, his roast (let's call it) of Sam Harris [1]. He starts by asserting that Harris "[has] increasingly embraced a toxic form of anti-Muslim bigotry masquerading as rational atheism" -- that "he and others like him spout and promote Islamophobia under the guise of rational atheism." He then goes on to observe that "Harris does far, far more than voice criticisms of Islam as part of a general critique of religion" and presents quotes by Harris himself. He explains that "Harris has used his views about Islam to justify a wide range of vile policies aimed primarily if not exclusively at Muslims, from torture [...] to steadfast support for Israel," that "Harris sided with the worst Muslim-hating elements in American society by opposing the building of a Muslim community center near Ground Zero." Greenwald writes: "In sum, he sprinkles intellectual atheism on top of the standard neocon, right-wing worldview of Muslims"... Yes, he labels the rhetoric that Harris "spews" as "bile".. Yes, his own rhetoric is often of the pointed sort ("That is the Harris worldview: obsessed with bad acts of foreign Muslims, almost entirely blind to - if not supportive of - the far worse acts of westerners like himself"). But when it counts, his criticisms of people he disagrees with are usually maintain a careful composure, afaik. In the comments section of his Guardian articles, it's a different story. "Do you know how to read?" from a month or so before Snowden is the example that sticks out in my mind. Wish he'd find another stress-relief activity. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/03/sam-harris-muslim-animus http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/03/sam-har...
grey-area 13y ago
Jeremy Scahill[1] and Laura Poitras[2] are also taking part in this proposed news enterprise. They are at least as impressive as Greenwald, if not more so, and less inclined to engage with internet trolls or petty arguments on twitter. There are many other journalists around the world who are not working in the English language but could be translated (for example Shayie[3] in Yemen). [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a3sAet_dQA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a3sAet_dQA [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras-snowden.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras-sno... [3] http://news.yahoo.com/us-disappointed-yemen-journalists-release-204657960.html http://news.yahoo.com/us-disappointed-yemen-journalists-rele...

droopyEyelids 13y ago

First off, I love Mr Greenwald, but I expect that other journalists will be much better than him and eventually surpass his lead. In my opinion, GG's strength lies in his clear-mindness, research skills, and instinctual opposition to bullshit. He has tremendous weaknesses in terms of hostility though. NOT that he calls a lie a lie, but instead he frequently both uses insults, and assumes malice. In writing for the public, especially if you hope to convince anyone of anything, those are huge mistakes. Glenn consistently calls things and people "stupid" (very little on earth is stupid, when it looks that way there are factors influencing the behavior you aren't accounting for, and addressing those factors has a far more persuasive effect than cursing the person who behaves under their influence as 'stupid'). Secondly, Mr Greenwald _very_ frequently implies people are behaving with malice. Malicious action is the worst thing you can accuse someone of; if a person is truly malicious they are beyond reason (because their reasoning ability tells them to hurt you.) Very few people on this planet operate with malice outside of the moments they're passionately enraged. Instead, tons of us hurt each other because we've been conditioned to do some action that has effects we don't acknowledge, because we're faced to choose between hurting ourselves or offloading it onto someone else and don't know how to do it better, or a similar reason. I believe Glenn will end up an editor, or in some senior position where his instinct informs other journalists where to look for stories, but as for the actual research and writing? To maintain the relationships you need with sources and the public, you have to understand the points I've written above, and Mr. Greenwald doesn't seem to show any tendency to move in that direction. (As an aside, I think this might be because of his courtroom training, where it's an adversarial system, or he is incredibly stressed out)

selmnoo 13y ago
Yes, sadly I too have noticed this behavior from Glenn, his tone quickly turns confrontational at times and this starts to pick at his credibility in the view of the audience. Someone should really explain this to him so he can make some corrective efforts on this.
- bcoates 13y ago
  It's the outfit. If he looked like Spider Jerusalem everyone would be fine but he looks like a congressman so people expect more politesse than they get. I guess it's too much to expect Julian Assange levels of stagecraft from everybody.
- nbevans 13y ago
  I saw an interview with him and the BBC a few weeks ago. When the subject of the UK came up he said he didn't care what they thought and he didn't care if he couldn't enter that country ever again because of what he believes is a hostile political system. He seems very willing to make enemies of entire countries which is an odd personality trait to say the least. I would think most westerners would be extremely distraught if, for some reason, they realised they could no longer visit the USA, UK, and numerous other major Western nations because of something they had done wrong.
  - a3n 13y ago
    "because of something they had done wrong." What has he done wrong?
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      Perhaps that 'they' is meant to refer to the country.
detcader 13y ago
First off, I'm not sure Greenwald could stop writing. He seems pretty addicted to it. Let's look at perhaps Greenwald's biggest article critical of a single individual in recent times, his roast (let's call it) of Sam Harris [1]. He starts by asserting that Harris "[has] increasingly embraced a toxic form of anti-Muslim bigotry masquerading as rational atheism" -- that "he and others like him spout and promote Islamophobia under the guise of rational atheism." He then goes on to observe that "Harris does far, far more than voice criticisms of Islam as part of a general critique of religion" and presents quotes by Harris himself. He explains that "Harris has used his views about Islam to justify a wide range of vile policies aimed primarily if not exclusively at Muslims, from torture [...] to steadfast support for Israel," that "Harris sided with the worst Muslim-hating elements in American society by opposing the building of a Muslim community center near Ground Zero." Greenwald writes: "In sum, he sprinkles intellectual atheism on top of the standard neocon, right-wing worldview of Muslims"... Yes, he labels the rhetoric that Harris "spews" as "bile".. Yes, his own rhetoric is often of the pointed sort ("That is the Harris worldview: obsessed with bad acts of foreign Muslims, almost entirely blind to - if not supportive of - the far worse acts of westerners like himself"). But when it counts, his criticisms of people he disagrees with are usually maintain a careful composure, afaik. In the comments section of his Guardian articles, it's a different story. "Do you know how to read?" from a month or so before Snowden is the example that sticks out in my mind. Wish he'd find another stress-relief activity. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/03/sam-harris-muslim-animus http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/03/sam-har...

grey-area 13y ago

Jeremy Scahill[1] and Laura Poitras[2] are also taking part in this proposed news enterprise. They are at least as impressive as Greenwald, if not more so, and less inclined to engage with internet trolls or petty arguments on twitter. There are many other journalists around the world who are not working in the English language but could be translated (for example Shayie[3] in Yemen). [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a3sAet_dQA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a3sAet_dQA [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras-snowden.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras-sno... [3] http://news.yahoo.com/us-disappointed-yemen-journalists-release-204657960.html http://news.yahoo.com/us-disappointed-yemen-journalists-rele...