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My Resignation from the Intercept

greenwald.substack.com

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Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#331

Post by nindalf »

With respect to Greenwald, his view that publishing something is an unmitigated good and can be countered by other reporting is only true in theory, not in practice.

Since he’s talking about publishing an article about a Democratic presidential candidate days before an election, let’s compare that to the last time this happened.

Every media outlet starting from the NYT breathlessly repeated “but her emails”. Some of us knew it was a non story at the time, but it was impossible to compete with the front page of the NYT and 24 hour news networks. Literally everyone was focused on the god damn emails, very little on the policy proposals of each candidate. This had an impact on the election and it’s safe to say with hindsight, that it was a non story and shouldn’t have been covered. Perhaps Glenn Greenwald would call not covering it “suppression” and “censorship” but it was also the right thing to do.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#332

Post by garden_hermit »

whimsicalism wrote: post #167
gameswithgo wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greenwald has never operated in a way that concerns itself with the consequences of actions. The philosophy is "we report, freely, what we believe to be true and fair, and whats comes of it does not matter". I am personally torn on this kind of philosophy. Would that everyone was like this, but since they are not, surely there are times when too much is on the line to behave this way? He explicitly talks about this a…

This is where the distinction between "act" and "rule" consequentialism becomes important. Perhaps there is "too much" on the line, but I think that we live in a complex world, it is difficult to estimate the downstream impacts of your action, and that every time you choose to suppress a story due to potential political consequences, you are undermining broader "trust." Better to default to reporting freely since, as…

Both both blocking and running a story are conscious actions with political consequences and which have the potential to undermine trust. Plenty of people lost trust in the media following their focus on the Hillary Clinton email scandal, which amounted to nothing but likely swayed the election.

There seems to be some sort of paradox of tolerance to trust and the news media.

In principle, we should allow all information. However, bad faith actors can easily take advantage of this principle, and flood the airwaves with dubious and ultimately-overblown stories (see Clinton's emails). If bad-faith actors are afoot (which seems the case here), then at some point an editor needs to step in and refuse to print the story—the question though, is when? And is there anyway to step in, and have it not look like censorship?

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#333

Post by TearsInTheRain »

nebolo wrote: post #105
blhack wrote: 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…

Can you be a bit more specific on what you believe to be so important/surprising/relevant about this story that would make an entire journalistic career? What is the story that is not being told, and actively being suppressed? I have been following this quite closely and can't see it.

Did you watch the Tony Babulinksi interview with Tucker Carlson? It shows that Joe Biden had an ownership stake in and was directly involved with his son's company that received a 5-10 million forgivable loan from a top member of the Chinese Communist party. This directly contradicts claims Joe Biden has made throughout his campaign and at the last debate.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#334

Post by archagon »

Nacdor wrote: post #42
gkoberger wrote: post #3

Greenwald has really fascinated me the past decade. He was on track to being one of the most prolific reporters on the planet, and he has gone really down this weird victimhood "censorship" path. Sometimes it’s legitimate censorship. Other times, your editor is just insisting you don’t spread misinformation.

Do you have anything to support this accusation? I've been watching him closely for several years and it seems the mortal sin he committed was his failure to join the Russiagate bandwagon. In the end that was clearly the correct choice, but the liberal media no longer tolerates anyone who has the audacity to undermine their chosen narrative.

> clearly the correct choice

I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but saying something with confidence doesn't actually make it true.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#335

Post by adobecs3 »

nindalf wrote: post #331

With respect to Greenwald, his view that publishing something is an unmitigated good and can be countered by other reporting is only true in theory, not in practice. Since he’s talking about publishing an article about a Democratic presidential candidate days before an election, let’s compare that to the last time this happened. Every media outlet starting from the NYT breathlessly repeated “but her emails”. Some of…

Still more of a story than "Russia collusion"

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#336

Post by kyleblarson »

bachmeier wrote: post #20

"as a last-ditch attempt to avoid being censored, I encouraged them to air their disagreements with me by writing their own articles that critique my perspectives and letting readers decide who is right" That's not how this works. If the editor concludes that it's a garbage story dropped a few days before the election in an attempt to influence the election, you don't run it and then "let the readers decide who is ri…

The problem is the selectivity with which the MSM acts. The MSM spent weeks pouring over Kavanaugh's yearbooks and attempting to ruin the lices of the Covington high school kids but they can't do some basic investigation on a story that has been corroborated multiple times?

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#337

Post by meowface »

Rudism wrote: post #308
meowface wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming it's a garbage story and that it's intended to influence the election based on absolutely nothing. Why not make counter-arguments to the actual piece, when it comes out? I'd argue that all of the rampant censorship about any conceivable questioning or criticism of Biden is the thing that history is likely going to look back on in a few months, and perhaps years, as unethical and irresponsible journali…

It's not based on nothing. It's based on a pattern of the current administration and the media that supports it propping up nonsense and blowing stories that are critical of their opposition out of proportion specifically in order to rile people up and influence elections. Pizzagate, Hillary's emails, Q-Anon, these things all take a toll on people who actually care about what is true and real. Is it really surprising…

I fucking hate conspiracy theories. I spend (or waste) way too much time online arguing with conspiracy theorists and debunking conspiracy theories. Trump is definitely the conspiracy theorist in chief. It's beyond insanity.

But just like conspiracy theories are irrational, kneejerk dismissing all negative stories as conspiracy theories is also irrational. There's a much more reasonable way of handling this. Things always have to be taken on a case-by-case basis.

You mention boy-who-cried-wolf, and NY Post is definitely a shitty and extremely biased outlet, but probably about as biased as modern day CNN. Both have peddled a lot of hyperbole and unjustified shit, and both have also reported on real things. As far as I know, the NY Post never supported absurd conspiracy theories like Pizzagate or QAnon.

NY Post certainly hyped up Hillary's private email server well beyond the point of reason and fairness, but this scenario would exactly be like if every non-right-biased news outlet all decided to never publish any story even mentioning that she had a private email server that she may have used for non-personal affairs. Of course it'd be extremely irresponsible to have headlines about her email server every day, but it's just as irresponsible to consider the mere existence of the topic an unspeakable matter, as it would be if Twitter were to have censored every link to an article mentioning that she had a private email server she's alleged to have used for non-personal things. This is the Streisand effect in action, here.

It's simply not rational to assume that any story Trump supports is probably untrue. He lies an unbelievable amount, but if you assume 60% of everything that ever comes out of his mouth is a lie, that 40% could still have some real things worth trying to look at objectively. And in this case, this isn't some thing he just peddled entirely himself out of the blue; a newspaper reported on it, even if they're a very biased newspaper. He's going to support anything that he thinks helps his campaign, and not everything that helps his campaign is necessarily bullshit, even if a lot is.

This absolutist stance is part of the thing that only bolsters his constant accusations of fake news - "fake news" has in some sense become a self-fulfilling prophecy in some cases, like here. The left never followed Hillary's proclamation of "when they go low, we go high". Every year, the opposition sinks lower and lower, gradually trending towards the level of the other side. And that's probably exactly what Trump wants and has been trying to trigger.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#339

Post by adobecs3 »

Nacdor wrote: post #42
gkoberger wrote: post #3

Greenwald has really fascinated me the past decade. He was on track to being one of the most prolific reporters on the planet, and he has gone really down this weird victimhood "censorship" path. Sometimes it’s legitimate censorship. Other times, your editor is just insisting you don’t spread misinformation.

Do you have anything to support this accusation? I've been watching him closely for several years and it seems the mortal sin he committed was his failure to join the Russiagate bandwagon. In the end that was clearly the correct choice, but the liberal media no longer tolerates anyone who has the audacity to undermine their chosen narrative.

If it's againat Biden it's misinformation and if you don't agree you are alt right. Conpiracy theorist. Also Russia collusion has been proven.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#340

Post by whimsicalism »

nwienert wrote: post #91
agentdrtran wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Journalists have essentially become socialites. They don't want to publish articles that will rock the boat," 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.

There’s two social groups, they don’t want to critique their social group.

Many more than two social groups.
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