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My Resignation from the Intercept

greenwald.substack.com

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Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#421

Post by troughway »

secondcoming wrote: post #326
kev_da_dev wrote: post #190

Go look at all the comments being downvoted. It's insane how many reasonable, common-sense arguments are being downvoted into oblivion. HN has a serious astroturfing problem and I can only imagine who's behind it.

They click on your username and downvote any other comments you've made too. It's a real shame. I was hoping HN was more adult than reddit.

It isn't, and in due time enough people will get tired of this and form some kind of an HN-meets-lobste.rs-thing that is more oriented towards diversity of opinions, with less of a fuck-you to everyone who disagrees with the groupthink of HN.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#422

Post by cblconfederate »

Can i put another dimension without trying to be judgmental: it seems to me that the younger generations of journalists (and audiences) are a lot more censorious by nature. I don't know the causes of it but it's certainly very prevalent, and it seems all the 'dissenters' are a few decades older. There was for a while a prevalent narrative of "safety" or "safe spaces", but that has passed, and it seems that it has been replaced by a general tendency to hide ucomfortable problems "under the rug".

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#423

Post by alchemism »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #378
nostromo wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This appears to be correct. Most media outlets now are activists pretending to be journalists, run by businesspeople who care about revenue more than truth.

This has been true since the advent...I remember reading about the wars between Hamilton and Jefferson in the papers way back during the young years of the US. None of this is new. It's way overamplified now, and everyone cries censorship and fascism when it suits them.

Remember the Maine!

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#424

Post by ChuckMcM »

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…

I was coming here to say the same.

When you have all of the intelligence agencies you trust saying "Hey there are nation-state actors who are actively trying to sow dis-information in order to affect the outcome of the US elections." as an editor your only response can be "We are going to be really really choosy about stories we publish with respect to either candidate prior to the election."

Maybe it is a big scoop and all legit, and maybe it will like the "Hunter files" that Fox News was touting and have now mysteriously vanished. The responsible thing to do is publish after the election. What ever the story talks about will still be true or untrue then, and the risk of it being an elaborate hoax are non-zero. Nobody wants to be the person who was "duped by a foreign intelligence service into helping them move the election their way." That is not a badge of honor.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#425

Post by gnusty_gnurc »

burlesona wrote: post #373

Honest question: is it just me or is it getting harder to determine what is factual and what is not? It seems like the US has begun to splinter such that there are two different sets of "facts" on many issues, but of course that is not how facts work. Nevertheless, when doing research and investigation is it often hard for me to pin down the truth behind any of the "facts" that are thrown at me, whether that's by the…

It's the echo chamber and unoriginal thought.

In a free society, people are free to speak about the world and how they see it. This is practically the job of a journalist: observe, record goings-on and ask insightful questions that generate understanding.

But now people that don't cleave to the consensus opinions of the crowd are essentially discarded based on the post-modern view of dubious "lived experience", suspect motivation, etc.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#426

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

lordnacho wrote: post #316
gfodor wrote: 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 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…

> Economist, FT and the WSJ

I have print subscriptions to the first 2 but I disagree because what I recall from working in blue collar jobs is that people who would benefit from that world view will not bother. they spend their days thinking about basic survival and when they pick up a paper (on the bog) just want to be entertained. Sadly the typical reader of the Economist never had to deal with anyone from the "lower" classes. They consider them as something they need protection from. A minimum wage, social safety net and working health care system usually goes a long way in preventing this divide from growing into a normal (like in the US - or very poor countries that share that class divide as a common property with the US).

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#427

Post by rat87 »

karl11 wrote: post #117
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…

You're right that it's not how this works. Media organizations are not interested truth or accuracy of their stories, but simply how many ads and subscriptions the stories can sell. And that's not the say they are motivated by greed - even worse, they are often motivated by missionary-like zeal to promote a cause. So of course it would follow that they have no interest in publishing anything disagreeable to their rea…

Many media organizations care quite a lot about their reputation as well as their effect on society.They want to report honestly and give an accurate picture of the word. Including Glenns paper, that's why he joined it.

Glenn seems to have picked a grudge(against establishment Dems) over commitment to solid truthful reporting

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#428

Post by drewrv »

marcusverus wrote: post #411
ggggtez wrote: post #346

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?

It's also possible he's a once great journalist who has gone off the rails. Which seems likely given the fact that the editors at a publication he founded refused to publish this piece.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#429

Post by originalvichy »

marcusverus wrote: post #411
ggggtez wrote: post #346

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?

I think saying he brokenthe stort is a bit of a stretch. Didn’t Snowden himself contact journalists?

Snowden was tightly in contact with these journalists and showed them undoubtable proof that he did indeed work with the NSA. This story as I understand it is not even close to the level of verification that the Snowden story had.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#430

Post by donohoe »

karl11 wrote: post #117
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…

You're right that it's not how this works. Media organizations are not interested truth or accuracy of their stories, but simply how many ads and subscriptions the stories can sell. And that's not the say they are motivated by greed - even worse, they are often motivated by missionary-like zeal to promote a cause. So of course it would follow that they have no interest in publishing anything disagreeable to their rea…

>> Media organizations are not interested truth or accuracy of their stories

As someone who works in media (not on editorial side but on digital), I can assure you thats you are wrong.

Most media orgs have a log of rigor and fact-checking that goes into their stories. The editorial side is typically (not always in some places) shielded from the business pressures (for better and for worse).

Its someone else's problem to worry about clicks etc.

Greenwald stopped being a credible journalist awhile ago. Just look at what he was pushing these last few weeks.

I have a lot of respect for his early work but he went on a weird tangent.

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