Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My Resignation from the Intercept

greenwald.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

701–710 of 1001 posts

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#701

Post by facet1ous »

I read through Glenn's draft after seeing the outrage on this thread and... it reads like a generic opinion piece.

I think he makes some good points and some dumb ones, but that's besides the point in all honesty - most of the article is him just complaining about the state of the media, making accusations of double-standards, and full of inflammatory language. There's little investigative journalism, no interviews with backing sources, no new facts laid out, just complaining about supposed wrong-doings and coverups. Some of which can be easily refuted.

Look I don't read The Intercept, but this is not newsroom material. I'm not journalist or have any kind of editing experience, but I wouldn't even run this in a school newspaper if I was put in charge. This is editorial material, pure and simple. The fact that he's complaining about censorship is eye-rolling.

I think it's pretty clear that most people here don't understand that the op-ed page and newsroom are different organizations, run by different people, and have different standards, even though they appear on the same newspaper. it's scary that these lines are being blurred more and more by the day.

But honestly, what's really probably going on is that Glenn Greenwald is tired of The Intercept and wants move full-time to his substack page. To do that he's bootstrapping his audience on his new site by manufacturing outrage. I would think most people should see through this...

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#702

Post by PedroBatista »

reilly3000 wrote: post #608

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/how-fake-persona-laid-... This is why the Intercept didn't want to run Glenn's story. FYI this sob story has some precedent: In 2014: "I absolutely refuse to be exiled from my own country for the crime of doing journalism and I'm going to force the issue just on principle. And I think going back for a ceremony like the Polk Awards or other forms of journalistic awards would be a…

> He wasn't even menaced by authorities.

Dude... really?

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#703

Post by wussboy »

chaostheory wrote: post #690
lordnacho wrote: post #316

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…

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

Surely that has never been true.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#704

Post by confidantlake »

macinjosh wrote: post #203
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…

> all that matters is that the story runs, not whether it's shown to be false months after the election is over This mentality is authoritarian, anti-democratic, and anti-free speech. It implies that YOU, the editor, or whoever gets to decide for the rest of us what is worth knowing about or not. This is why non-partisan mainstream news is failing. The Internet has shown people the stories (true or not) that were bei…

Investigating whether a story is true or not is a fundamental part of journalism. Not publishing stories about Bat Boy found with Elvis in Atlantas is a good thing.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#705

Post by alisonkisk »

lliamander wrote: post #682
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…

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-...

Sinclair is a self-admitted Republican media enterprise. The supposed witness is a Trump campaign member who has provided no evident except oral interviews on right-wing media.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#706

Post by cambalache »

brian_cloutier wrote: post #691
jeffreyrogers wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Economist is quickly losing that reputation. I cancelled my subscription. The FT is still pretty good, though they shy away from anything critical of powerful corporations/individuals.

What about the economist made you cancel? My impression is that they're still doing a great job of providing trustworthy news which avoids sensationalism

I forgot the law's name, but with the Economist happens that every time I read an article about something I know the article leaves me dissatisfied. It is presented "objectively" but always key information is omitted if it goes against the Economist worldview (Free markets and liberal democracies led by center, center-left parties in USA and the UK is what is best for the world)

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#707

Post by xvedejas »

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…

A nitpick on technical language: what you describe is a _positive_ feedback loop. A negative feedback loop is one that is able to calibrate its output by applying corrections to fluctuations. On the other hand, a positive feedback is one which can grow out of control, because it does the opposite. I think that's what you meant when describing how failing media outlets will double-down on the wrong strategy.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#708

Post by cambalache »

rat87 wrote: post #466
marcusverus wrote: post #411

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?

It's more likely that Greenwalds colleagues are a better judge

Oh yes, your character judged by your peers, a la Cultural Revolution. Wonderful.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#709

Post by CogentHedgehog »

justnotworthit wrote: post #656
CogentHedgehog wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There we go. A journalist is supposed to follow the facts wherever they go -- even if it reveals something they're uncomfortable with. They build a reputation by researching and checking their stories, and not running stories unless the facts hold up. Greenwald made his name with quality investigative journalism. It sounds like he has fallen from this standard by trying to run a story with dubious political talking p…

> There we go. Why did you not believe the first side you heard but you believed the second? Or is your conclusion making sense of both?

My conclusion is making sense of both of these.

Why didn't I believe Greenwald initially? Well, I have had the dubious pleasure of seeing many people behave badly and then play the morally-outraged victim to try to legitimize it. There's a particular way they write and talk, and Greenwald's description of events reeked of it.

The Intercept's response made a few jabs but it didn't level any particular wild accusations, unlike Greenwald. It seemed much more credible, although clearly frustrated. I assume (reading between the lines) there he developed a prior history of conflicts and bad blood at the Intercept, and political differences. This kind of blow-up does not just come from nowhere.

Greenwald has since released the emails, and they sound much closer to what the Intercept said than what he did: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/emails-with-intercept-edito...

The editors clearly had substantive journalistic concerns about the extent Greenwald was drawing conclusions from dubious evidence, and the lack of context around it. They're comfortable publishing the parts of the story he can substantiate, but not the parts that are weaker (or less on-topic). There have some political disagreements, but that's hardly censorship.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#710

Post by cambalache »

agentdrtran wrote: post #65
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…

"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.

Please show me a high-profile investigative piece from the mainstream media against Biden.
Post reply on HN