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My Resignation from the Intercept

greenwald.substack.com

71–80 of 1001 posts

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#71
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…

What do you make of the idea that independent journalists on the web being the future?

It isn’t reasonable to expect independent journalists to take over the work that news media currently engages in. While there are legitimate criticisms of media companies becoming too large and being driven by outrage based engagements, they also provide the resources for some of the best journalists to spend a large part of their lives dedicated to digging into a story rather than worrying about how to make ends meet.

The press is a pillar of American democracy. Independent journalists are great but they just won’t have the same power or credibility as they do when they’re organized.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#72
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What leads you to believe that he was trying to spread misinformation? The suppression of criticism leveled against Joe Biden or any other individual in public service is a grave danger to democracy. I commend Mr. Greenwald for standing up to censorship.

Please entertain the possibility for a moment, whether you agree with it or not, that this story was indeed planted by a foreign nation for the specific purpose of manipulating our election. Do you then believe that it is responsible to willfully help spread it and blast it all over every social media site? Aren't you doing the foreign nation's bidding then? If you do agree there, then where would you draw the line f…

This argument can be made for nearly every piece of political journalism... you're only supporting this suppression because it helps your preferred candidate.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#73
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If the editor concludes that it's a garbage story dropped a few days before the election in an attempt to influence the election Nobody disputes why this story was dropped at the time it was dropped. It's a common tactic that has been practiced for decades by political campaigns and even media outlets. Heck, there is a reason why the Kavanaugh story broke when it did. There is a reason why the NY Times published Tru…

> What's different is that all of center-left/left news establishment decided that they are going to get Biden elected and protect him from any negative news. That’s what we all wanted right? That’s the point of all the tech folks talking about no bystanders and corporations being forced to take a political stance was about wasn’t it? It worked. They’re taking a stance.

> That’s what we all wanted right

What are you talking about? I'm unsure if you're describing the tenor of comments here, but there was a clear amount of uneasiness with how these platforms are using their reach, whether with the Biden story or Uber on Prop 22.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#74
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If the editor concludes that it's a garbage story dropped a few days before the election in an attempt to influence the election Nobody disputes why this story was dropped at the time it was dropped. It's a common tactic that has been practiced for decades by political campaigns and even media outlets. Heck, there is a reason why the Kavanaugh story broke when it did. There is a reason why the NY Times published Tru…

> What's different is that all of center-left/left news establishment decided that they are going to get Biden elected and protect him from any negative news. That’s what we all wanted right? That’s the point of all the tech folks talking about no bystanders and corporations being forced to take a political stance was about wasn’t it? It worked. They’re taking a stance.

>That’s what we all wanted right?

I never wanted that. But yes, this sentiment is out there. And yes, this is the logical end result.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#75
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…

> The media has fallen into the well-known trap of optimizing the wrong KPI. You want to maximize trust with the public, not engagement

KPI for whose benefit? Shareholders or the 'public good'? Why would a for-profit entity optimize for the public good over profits?

Fox news is crushing all their competitors optimizing for engagement.

Who is winning optimizing for trust?

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#76
post #34

It would be so very, very interesting if Trump were to pardon Snowden.

It's such a no-brainer since the national security apparatus (the FBI, NSA, etc) were used against Trump and his campaign very transparently. So you'd think he would want to strike a blow against them by pardoning Snowden.

In reality, he doesn't seem to have a deep, principled understanding of the issues of the "national security" apparatus (commonly known as the "deep state"). So I'm not optimistic, although maybe he's just waiting until after the election.

What Trump's administration is doing to Julian Assange is also quite evil (see Cassandra Fairbanks' reporting here - she's a very clear Trump supporter and yet is highly critical of his admin with respect to their treatment of Assange). It's not any more evil than what Biden or others would do, to be clear, so this isn't something unique to Trump, but we can certainly say that Trump has not shown any desire to try to do the right thing here.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#77
post #33
post #5

We are witnessing the biggest concerted censorship effort in the history of the USA. One for the history books, depending on who gets to write it in the future. Regardless of whether or not you believe on Tony Bubolinsky, you should at the very least have the opportunity to hear him and make up your own mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zLfBRgeFFo

How is not publishing an unverifiable story "censorship"? That's what we trust real news organizations to do. And saying that they should at least publish the controversy is absurd -- first of all, the Times did publish the controversy days ago [1], and second of all, it basically allows the peddlers of these unverifiable stories to dictate the news. 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/25/business/media/hunter-bid...

Unverifiable? Plenty of documentary evidence has been produced that could easily be verified. Simply ask the Bidens if it's true.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#78
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What leads you to believe that he was trying to spread misinformation? The suppression of criticism leveled against Joe Biden or any other individual in public service is a grave danger to democracy. I commend Mr. Greenwald for standing up to censorship.

Please entertain the possibility for a moment, whether you agree with it or not, that this story was indeed planted by a foreign nation for the specific purpose of manipulating our election. Do you then believe that it is responsible to willfully help spread it and blast it all over every social media site? Aren't you doing the foreign nation's bidding then? If you do agree there, then where would you draw the line f…

Do you personally believe people should be able to decide for themselves things in their life, make opinions based on different information provided?

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#79
post #5

We are witnessing the biggest concerted censorship effort in the history of the USA. One for the history books, depending on who gets to write it in the future. Regardless of whether or not you believe on Tony Bubolinsky, you should at the very least have the opportunity to hear him and make up your own mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zLfBRgeFFo

Um. World War 1, 2, the Korean conflict, and the Vietnamese conflict all had a LOT of censorship, not to mention a lot of stuff that got hushed up with buddy buddy relationships.

Also, we're all talking about it, so it's not very censored, now is it?

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#80
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…

What do you make of the idea that independent journalists on the web being the future?

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