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My Resignation from the Intercept

greenwald.substack.com

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Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#501

Post by RonanTheGrey »

pvg wrote: post #387
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 Intercept's editor-in-chief has put out a statement of their own. https://twitter.com/ErikWemple/status/1321896097099489283 Greenwald himself just confirmed on twitter he could publish with no editorial oversight. Eventually, his colleagues balked. "A grown person throwing a tantrum", as the editor puts it, sounds about right.

That statement reads, to me, as unprofessional and petulant. What kind of editor makes a personal attack on a former colleague in a public setting in the name of a journalistic organization? It simply drives home to me the idea that it was the editors, not Greenwald, who are being petty dictators.

I guess how this whole debacle is received will probably depend on one's life experience.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#502

Post by Karunamon »

ivalm wrote: post #86
1980phipsi wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would withhold any opinion that it is a "garbage story" until actually reading it...

It is about emails which have no headers, that are impossible to verify, that were “known to fbi” for a long time but didn’t produce any action (because likely fake), and that are specifically being pushed to change outcome of election despite, again, no real evidence of their veracity.

At this point I'm forced to conclude that there is more evidence pointing towards the authenticity of this information than pointing away from it.

Consider:

- The FBI came out and said there's no evidence of foreign disinformation.

- As has the DOJ.

- As has the director of national intelligence.

- Hunter's lawyer contacting the shop owner to ask for the return of the hardware

- The FBI's grand jury subpoena for the laptop

- The Biden campaign's weak (those meetings weren't in our schedule), later walked back to non (they might have happened anyways), repudiation of authenticity

- Travel mentioned in the emails matches up with Secret Service travel records

- The absurd volume of pictures of Hunter Biden in compromising positions

The argument against authenticity, at this point, falls deeper and deeper into conspiracy theorist territory. At the very least, it fails Occam's razor. The best argument I know of against authenticity is the lack of release of any raw messages with headers, but even that is pretty low-impact in the face of FBI/DOJ/DNI confirmation.

I've collected what I found so far here, both arguments for and against, with sources where possible: https://www.kialo.com/are-the-hunter-biden-emails-as-release...

If the raw messages are later released in whole, and the DKIM is validated, that's the smoking gun. A number of media organizations are then going to have some very uncomfortable questions to answer. The same later applies to some of our three-letter agencies if they turn out to be bogus. That would mean our investigative and intelligence agencies are both tainted.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#503

Post by raxxorrax »

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…

While true, in relation to the stories about Russian collusion without any credible evidence, I think this criticism of editorial decisions is very, very one-sided. Especially considering publicly available evidence.

It is true that it might not be the right thing to publish, in context of current smears in politics not exceptional, aside maybe violation of privacy which also didn't get much focus as of late.

He also seem to have contractual rights to publish it, so the editors aren't responsible. The effectiveness of this censorship is a large concern aside from the story.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#504

Post by ritchiea »

sandwichest wrote: post #478
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…

> "If the editor concludes that it's a garbage story dropped a few days before the election in an attempt to influence the election" This is bordering on hyperbole. 1. Glenn Greenwald isn't one to produce a "Garbage Story," he's a credible journalist with a long history of dropping bombshells. He's dropped bombshells about both the right AND the left. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Greenwald#Awards 2. It's the j…

It’s not about who Greenwald is, it’s about the quality of reporting & the evidence they have to support their claims. You can’t run big stories based on the reputation of the journalist rather than the quality of the reporting. You’re basically suggesting they should get out of the way of Greenwald because he’s a celebrity journalist.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#505

Post by shalmanese »

dragonwriter wrote: post #84
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…

> 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 right". On the other hand, if Greenwald actually does have, or believe he has, a contract which guarantees him immunity to outside editing as he seems to claim ("The Intercept’s editors, in violation of my contractual right of edit…

A right is only useful if you assert that right. If you look at the email chain that Glenn himself published [1], the correspondence is essentially the editor giving a bunch of suggestions of how to improve the article, then Glenn asserting CENSORSHIP and then the EIC telling him to stop being so rude to his colleagues and then Glenn quitting in a huff.

Maybe it's possible that all of the implied messages were exactly as Glenn surmised them to be but ultimately, it doesn't matter what's implied. Glenn at no point even brings up what his supposed contractual rights are and lays out a paper trail forcing them to acknowledge a breach of contract.

It's entirely possible that if he had just pushed a little harder, they would have simply been like "Well, it's your grave but it does state it in the contract so we'll put it up without edits" but him not even trying makes it seem like he is engineering the situation to resolve to this particular outcome.

[1] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/emails-with-intercept-edito...

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#506

Post by Udik »

csa wrote: post #444

Whether he realizes it or not, Greenwald is a foreign intelligence officer’s dream. Regardless of the actual authenticity of the Hunter emails, stuff like this is fairly easy to plant. So even if Greenwald got it right this time (maybe, maybe not), I can assure you that he will get it very wrong at least once in the future by the hands of a foreign intelligence officer (assuming he still has an audience). Folks who a…

> Folks who aggressively advocate for the verification of authenticity of documents [..] have a very good reason for taking the stance that they do.

This is for me the key quote of his reply to the editors:

"Repeatedly over the past several months, I've brought to Betsy's attention false claims that were published by The Intercept [..] This rigorous editorial process emerges only when an article deviates from rather than recites the political preferences of The Intercept and/or the standard liberal view on political controversies."

In other words, verification is obsessive when the story doesn't support the political side of the newspaper. When it does, any amount of sloppiness is fine.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#507

Post by technoplato »

uncoder0 wrote: post #364
technoplato wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is definitely true, but why is this post removed from the front page? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24934192 Edit: I'm a moron and it just dropped a bunch suddenly. Was not removed.

From what I have observed anything even tangentially related the Biden stories gets to the front page quickly and sometimes it sticks there for a few minutes then gets flagged enough to start dropping down the ranks. This one lasted a lot longer on the front page than most have.

So two thoughts here.

Are they artificially inflated and then deflated to counter act “bot” behavior?

OR

are they organically inflated and then censored?

I just wish I could be a fly on the wall and know. I just can’t believe this would be a damning enough piece to artificially inflate unless there’s a serious game of reverse psychology going on behind the scenes

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#508

Post by technoplato »

vaccinator wrote: post #343
technoplato wrote: post #302

Why was this removed from the front page? https://youtu.be/YCLkTYwN7VQ Edit: I'm a moron and it just dropped a bunch suddenly. Was not removed.

Sometimes they manually down-rank stories to take them out of sight, and sometimes the storry gets flagged so much. But it is #6 on the front page right now.

So two thoughts here. Are they artificially inflated and then deflated to counter act “bot” behavior? OR are they organically inflated and then censored? I just wish I could be a fly on the wall and know. I just can’t believe this would be a damning enough piece to artificially inflate unless there’s a serious game of reverse psychology going on behind the scenes

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#509

Post by pvg »

RonanTheGrey wrote: post #501
pvg wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Intercept's editor-in-chief has put out a statement of their own. https://twitter.com/ErikWemple/status/1321896097099489283 Greenwald himself just confirmed on twitter he could publish with no editorial oversight. Eventually, his colleagues balked. "A grown person throwing a tantrum", as the editor puts it, sounds about right.

That statement reads, to me, as unprofessional and petulant. What kind of editor makes a personal attack on a former colleague in a public setting in the name of a journalistic organization? It simply drives home to me the idea that it was the editors, not Greenwald, who are being petty dictators. I guess how this whole debacle is received will probably depend on one's life experience.

Greenwald called them pathological, censorious, illiberal and equates editorial oversight with censorship. It's hardly petulant and unprofessional to suggest, in response, that he's behaving like a grown-ass dude throwing a tantrum.

He's also just published their recent correspondence. It doesn't make him look great either:

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/emails-with-intercept-edito...

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