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My Resignation from the Intercept

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Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also the kind of story that can break someone's journalistic career. Even Fox News wouldn't run the story because it wasn't supported by facts. And last I heard, there still has been no concrete evidence of wrongdoing. Tucker Carlson claims that his evidence "got lost in the mail". In the age of the internet, they didn't snap any photos of this so-called proof? There is no "there" there. Just a bunch of internet…

Glenn Greenwald is a Pulitzer prize winning journalist. He broke the Snowden story--another sensational-sounding scoop which likely sounded like total bullshit at first. Is it possible that Mr. Greenwald is a better judge of whether or not there is a story here?

Greenwald is a lifelong sensationalist. His blog in the old days was extremely colorful and featured a lot of leaps of logic. It won him a fan base that included Ed Snowden. He's really a terrible journalist who just happened to get his hands on a treasure trove. The Guardian was part of the Snowden story as well and they don't publish garbage like the Biden laptop story with any undue credence.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#732
post #27

Glenn had a 3 hour long conversation on a podcast a few days ago where he laid out the problem really well: Journalists have essentially become socialites. They don't want to publish articles that will rock the boat, because the people they are friends with are the ones that own that boat, invite them to parties, and are a part of their friend groups. The reporting around this story has been absolutely unbelievable t…

> Journalists have essentially become socialites.

Glenn earned 400k a year at the intercept and has no end of opportunities now that he's quit and blamed the mythical "liberal bias" on his unceremonious departure.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#733

Keep in mind we're just seeing Greenwald's side of this. It sure sounds like he's trying to paint it a way that makes him look good and the Intercept look bad. Lots of claims of "censorship" etc. I want to hear their side of it as well. My guess is that there's a lot more to this story. My guess is if all his peers thought the claims were not solid enough to publish, there is probably a reason for that -- not simply…

Greenwald published the letters he received from The Intercept and their edits seem thoroughly reasonable. Greenwald's counterargument is that he never has had to accept edits before and he'd rather quit than listen to anyone else.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#734
post #27

Glenn had a 3 hour long conversation on a podcast a few days ago where he laid out the problem really well: Journalists have essentially become socialites. They don't want to publish articles that will rock the boat, because the people they are friends with are the ones that own that boat, invite them to parties, and are a part of their friend groups. The reporting around this story has been absolutely unbelievable t…

> Glenn had a 3 hour long conversation on a podcast a few days ago where he laid out the problem really well:

....

> The reporting around this story has been absolutely unbelievable to me

OK, here's the thing though. This is what I call the "Jordan Peterson school of thought."

You begin with a premise. Hunter Biden left his laptop at a repair store, some files were found on it, and these were delivered to a Republican Party muck-raker (and that is the most neutral thing you can say about Giuliani).

But, before you examine the premise, you are invited to look at the implications. If this is true then Hunter Biden has traded on his father's name! If this is true then Hunter Biden has gotten involved with some shady characters in Ukraine! If this is true, why hasn't Joe Biden ever recused himself from his dealings with these self-same shady characters?! And the biggest thing... why isn't the Main Stream Media (MSM) doing something about this? What do they have to hide?!

In short, you are set a premise, you are required to accept the truth of this premise, then you are pulled on an emotional journey about where the premise leads you...

But the premise is garbage. In Jordan Peterson's case, the US military is not the same in terms of complexity as real life, for instance. In this case, the Hunter Biden forgot his laptop story does not appear to hold water. You would have to assume a range of additional entities for it to make sense.

The reason the media are not reporting on this is because they want evidence that Hunter owned that laptop and that it is, as the US Intelligence community already pointed out, likely Russian interference. (No additional entities assumed here, since their intention to disrupt the US election is well documented, videoed and demonstrated).

Why this story is gaining so much traction on HN is beyond me. I am sure that Biden does not have the pearly white hands of a saint, nor is Trump as evil as he is sometimes painted, but I need you to pay the coin of logic before you expect me to invest in your emotional stock.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#735
post #494
post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There have been a virtually uncountable number of high-profile investigative pieces that criticise people in power published in the last 6 months! This argument is nonsense. They have been attack dogs of one political party or the other. But its always been this way. Social media ( especially twitter ) has shown people that journalists are political actors, not dispensers of "truth". They are part of the power stru…

A nihilist regarding truth, I see. You might want to watch this video to see why that's a dangerous attitude, and one that plays into the hands of morally unscrupulous actors and foreign adversaries: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nknYtlOvaQ0

"Everything is shit and everyone is guilty" is the exact thing an autocrat needs the majority of his citizens to believe to remain in power.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#736
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Misinformation" now seems to mean anything that threatens partisan objectives. Given Greewald's track record, I would give him a long leash.

or how about stuff that just can't be, you know, VERIFIED? Unless you take Tucker Carlson at his word and that this proof did exist, he just lost it. Oops. Greenwald seems to have gone way off the deep end, what the heck happened???

The Biden campaign nor Hunter Biden have never discredit the material. The fact that I really do want Biden to win does not make Glenn’s piece factually incorrect. I prefer Biden despite this shady story. Still, I commend Glenn for taking a very hard decision for the sake of his integrity.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#737

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/how-fake-persona-laid-... This is why the Intercept didn't want to run Glenn's story. FYI this sob story has some precedent: In 2014: "I absolutely refuse to be exiled from my own country for the crime of doing journalism and I'm going to force the issue just on principle. And I think going back for a ceremony like the Polk Awards or other forms of journalistic awards would be a…

https://mobile.twitter.com/KimStrassel/status/13219920675857...

Kimberley Strassel @KimStrassel I can say i have never seen this document, nor have i read anything quoting it. I can also say it therefore bears zero relevance on the legitimate evidence about Hunter Biden’s biz, via laptop and Bobulinski.

Update: long response from one of the authors of the draft: https://mobile.twitter.com/BaldingsWorld/status/132193469593...

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump bragged incessantly that, unlike Obama, he wouldn't have time to play golf if elected President. Instead, he's spent about twice as much time on the links as Obama did, including during various crises that would demand a normal president's full attention. If they didn't report how the President was responding to a given crisis, you'd criticize them for that . So I don't see how they can win here. They keep poun…

You just fell into the same trap. It is tiring to read news from a Trump-centric context. I cancelled my NYT subscription last week because I feel I’m taken for ride over their politics.

It's not "their" politics, it's just politics. What politicians do matters. Politics matters. "I don't want to hear about how our country is being run because 'politics'" is a really weird attitude to take towards a news outlet. This IS the news. Why do you think it's weird for it to get covered?

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#739
post #6

The media has fallen into the well-known trap of optimizing the wrong KPI. You want to maximize trust with the public, not engagement, if you want your media company to survive if its value proposition is providing journalism and the usual benefits that come with a free press. Unfortunately, not only is engagement the wrong metric, but it's also one which incentivizes the undermining of the actual metric you need to…

This is why the antri trust against Google is so important, to make it easier for the media to sell subscriptions so as not to have to resort to clickbait.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#740
post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why the Economist, FT and the WSJ still have a somewhat positive reputation. They're expensive and tend to write about things that are important, not sensational. All other publications are slowly falling victim to the parametdynamicser of the entertainment game, including ones that were also in that bracket not long ago. Mind you I'm not saying WaPo and NYT are trash now, they did start with a high rep and t…

WSJ has pretty biased opinion section though where they have almost no standards.

Which one is worse than the NYT "senior administration official" op-ed?
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