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My Resignation from the Intercept

greenwald.substack.com

681–690 of 1001 posts

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#681
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…

By this logic most of NYT senior staff should be close friends with Trump.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#682
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…

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…

There absolutely is a "there" there.

The DOJ has acknowledged that it has had a criminal investigation into Hunter Biden "and associates" for money laundering since 2019, and there is evidence and a credible witness that the Biden's (including Joe Biden) were involved in a bribery scheme with foreign governments.

Just start here: https://abc3340.com/amp/news/nation-world/tony-bobulinksi-i-...

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#683
post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The namesake of the Pulitzer prize, Joseph Pulitzer, was one of the foremost proponents of yellow journalism. Rudy Giuliani, an American hero for a couple of years after 9/11, is now a foreign asset for all intents and purposes. Having prestige doesn't make you infallible, it just means you were in the right place at the right time.

The DNI has already stated that there is no evidence that Hunter Biden's laptop is "Russian disinformation".

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#684
post #618
post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mind you I'm not saying WaPo and NYT are trash now WaPo and NYT aren't trash but they have fallen mightly. Which sucks because NYT easily has one of the best web design teams on the internet IMO and I used to look forward to reading it daily for over a decade. I'm still angry that they chose to go all Buzzfeed and hammer it everywhere politicially on their website. WSJ has been a fine replacement, but it's not as e…

> WaPo and NYT aren't trash but they have fallen mightly I would imagine its probably because their advertising revenue has been falling down because of the internet. You have to be flexible with your standards when your revenue is declining.

It's getting harder to buy this line as their financials keep getting better and better. They have nearly 5 million subscribers and aiming to hit 10mil by 2025. The advertising revenue isn't growing much, but subscriptions are.

https://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2020-02-06/ny-...

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#685
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.

I agree (as someone to left of the wsj median), but it's worth knowing that the editorial desk is an entirely different team from the opinion desk (with different standards etc)

Is this good? I don't think so, but it's worth being aware of, like to understand "why is that brand diluting itself with an opinion desk?" (I don't have a satisfying answer though)

https://www.quora.com/Is-there-anything-structurally-differe...

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#686
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 is typical of the approach Murdoch takes with his "high brow" media properties. Quality news, batshit crazy opinion.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#687
post #180

It seems impossible to hold a strong opinion on this without reading the article, and in particular, seeing how it is sourced. The elephant in the room (which Greenwald barely acknowledges in this essay) is that many mainstream news organizations have concluded that the evidence for this story was too weak to publish, and some believe it was fabricated by Russian intelligence. If Greenwald has evidence to the contrar…

Stupid circular argument. That is exactly the reasoning that he was arguing against. Based on this reasoning, you don’t publish unless mainstream news organizations publish first. Also you only publish what mainstream news organizations publish.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read his story? It's good, it's serious and it calls out the democrats about some real bullshit like inventing a fake Russian intelligence operation to not respond to allegations that come from the emails. I don't care if a journalist has a paranoid delusion as long as they are doing good writing and due diligence, and Glenn's story has both. He's not the most stable individual and he has made mistakes in the…

> Did you read his story? It's good, it's serious I have read it, and it's not good. It is an example of the worst aspects of pearl-clutching, can-you-imagine-what-this-means, ignore-the-actual-facts tendencies of the media today. He starts from a ludicrous premise and then doubles down on the ramifications, all without actually addressing the question of whether or not it is true. You certainly don't question the su…

This is exactly right. Greenwald has distanced himself from the Democratic establishment for years and basically given Trump a free pass to instead lead bizarre crusades against perceived Democrat hypocrisy.

This stuff from him today is just playing on hype. Having read the draft article he put on Substack, there is simply nothing in it. There is no evidence anywhere suggesting the Biden emails merit this reaction, let alone merit any sort of investigation.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#689
post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading the full article really puts me firmly on Greenwald's side of this thing. Given the controversy, I expected it to the inflammatory. Instead, this is solid, restrained reporting on the simple facts of the matter, along with completely fair critiques of the way those facts have been handled by other media.

The facts all rely on a hard drive no one has seen and no one will offer forensic evidence of

There is corroboration of at least some of the laptop's from Tony Bobulinski, who worked with the Bidens and has turned over devices with copies of the emails to the authorities.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#690
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…

The issue is not everyone can afford to pay for real unbiased journalism
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