My Resignation from the Intercept • Hacker News Board

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#941

Post by thu2111 » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 1:14 PM UTC

throwre24234 wrote: post #892

dmix wrote: 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. As a Indian, I disagree. The reportage on anything India is the usual mix of patronizing caste-curry-cow (and now 'Hindu terror') BS. The morons in-charge of international news at every one of these outlets (incl. Intercept, Twitter, Google..) think that just because they are white, their imagination of the world is the reality.

That's interesting. It's not just India and it's not about race. The NYT has a problem with Britain too, believe it or not. This article goes into some examples but they aren't the only ones:

https://unherd.com/2020/01/what-has-the-new-york-times-got-a...

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#942

Post by sandwichest » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 1:14 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #542

Nacdor wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most shocking part of this whole fiasco is the way The Intercept's editors blatantly play favorites, allowing disinformation that helps Biden while censoring a legitimate story that hurts him: > 4) Finally, I have to note what I find to be the incredible irony that The Intercept -- which has published more articles than I can count that contain factually dubious claims if not outright falsehoods that are designed…

> The Intercept -- which has published more articles than I can count that contain factually dubious claims if not outright falsehoods that are designed to undermine Trump's candidacy or protect Joe Biden -- is now telling me, someone who has never had an article retracted or even seriously corrected in 15 years, that my journalism doesn't meet the editorial requirements to be published at the Intercept. IMO, this ma…

You're not wrong. To me it highlights inherent flaws in the human psyche.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#943

Post by Miner49er » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 1:15 PM UTC

adfm wrote: post #254

I can’t believe anybody is talking about plain text email without verified cryptographic signatures in 2020. The technology is over 30 years old at this point. Anybody telling you different is a fraud — guaranteed.

The email has been verified with DKIM, apparently: https://twitter.com/erratarob/status/1322007153415200768?s=2...

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#944

Post by 0goel0 » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 1:15 PM UTC

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…

Just because a story can rock the boat doesn't mean it passes the journalistic bar to be published.

My take based on all parties' responses is that Glenn threw a tantrum because his editors were doing their job (stopping unsubstantiated lies from being published).

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#945

Post by HashThis » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 1:15 PM UTC

throwre24234 wrote: post #892

dmix wrote: 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. As a Indian, I disagree. The reportage on anything India is the usual mix of patronizing caste-curry-cow (and now 'Hindu terror') BS. The morons in-charge of international news at every one of these outlets (incl. Intercept, Twitter, Google..) think that just because they are white, their imagination of the world is the reality.

The "media" isn't optimizing for clicks or engagement. The media is optimizing for advancing the democratic political party. It blocks stories that cover topics where the political right may be correct.

Proof: Stories like the one they are hiding can drive a lot of traffic. They are hidden to advance one political party over another. The stories aren't killed because they want traffic.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#946

Post by thu2111 » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 1:18 PM UTC

panarky wrote: post #814

Bhilai wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WSJ has pretty biased opinion section though where they have almost no standards.

The great thing about biased opinion in a financial newspaper is that if you trade based on that opinion, chances are you'll lose money. From 2008 through 2016, WSJ opinion hammered on the supposed fiscal recklessness of the US federal government, warned that inflation and interest rates would skyrocket, and fretted about bond vigilantes. If you traded on this opinion and shorted long-term bonds, you would have lost…

In fairness, all those things are the expected outcomes of hugely profligate spending and have been seen in other economies that adopted the same policies. It's surely a bit of an open question why the USA, and to some extent other western countries, have been able to sustain such huge deficits for so long apparently in defiance of financial gravity. I think you're implying the WSJ's interest in the topic was entirely political in nature, but it's also possible they just noticed that their predictions kept not coming true and dropped it for that reason. After all, Trump promised big spending with tax decreases, with correspondingly huge deficits, and there doesn't seem to have been any negative effect of that (yet).

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#947

Post by thu2111 » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 1:26 PM UTC

wrren wrote: post #900

drchopchop wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would Substack solve this? It's just a more refined Medium with better monetization opportunities. Being on Substack doesn't mean the author is trustworthy, only that they have content that people will engage with (and potentially pay for), which is still the same KPI you're referring to.

Being on Substack solves the problem of censorship by way of one's editor or organization. It re-introduces the problem of unedited journalism; i.e journalism that isn't passed through a degree of peer review to ensure rigour. It seems as though it's no longer guarantee both full journalistic freedom and rigour at the same time.

The "peer review" being provided by most media outlets appears to be worse than useless, as Greenwald's experience shows. Typos and spelling errors can be fixed by machines for a very long time already. Editing for space is less necessary when writing for the infinitely long pages of the web - a good writer knows how much detail their audience wants better than an editor does. It's not clear why news has to be filtered through biased editors anymore when technology has eliminated space and distribution constraints.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#948

Post by thu2111 » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 1:31 PM UTC

ggggtez wrote: post #346

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…

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…

Tucker Carlson claims that his evidence "got lost in the mail"

No he didn't - where did that come from? He claimed the mail had been intercepted, someone had ripped open the parcel in transit and stolen the documents, and that the courier firm had even shown them pictures of the ripped-open package. He then made a series of remarkably precise claims about their interaction with the courier, the search the courier firm mounted to try and find the stolen documents and so on.

According to sibling comments this story was now confirmed in its entirety by UPS.

Ironically, I learned what Tucker Carlson said by reading the Guardian. Their top story yesterday (in terms of views) was something like "Tucker Carlson mocked after claiming evidence was lost in the mail". Obviously the Guardian, and those people who mocked him or lied about his claims now look very foolish and naive indeed, because his claims have been verified in their entirety by the courier firm themselves. The real story here is that UPS has been corrupted by the same kinds of win-at-any-cost leftists who blocked the story at Twitter and other places: they are so desperate for this to go away that they're actually destroying their own customer's valuables in transit. In the USA every line of communication is being shut down by these radicals, even postal mail.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#949

Post by sfg » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 1:35 PM UTC

I am not interested in what Mr Greenwald wrote, but I want the decision about reading it to be made between myself and Mr Greenwald.

Once the Intercept went beyond not publishing his content themselves to demanding he not publish it anywhere they were engaged in attempting to prevent myself and Mr Greenwald from making that choice.

Down with the Intercept.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#950

Post by rramach » Fri, Oct 30, 2020, 1:39 PM UTC

JeremyNT wrote: post #923

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…

The thing is, Greenwald is an editorialist and a pundit. I don't mean to give the intercept a pass here, but what Greenwald was doing wasn't "journalism" in the sense that most people think of it. This isn't "his" story - he didn't break it and he didn't do the primary research. Does his background give him insights that could make for a good editorial? Perhaps, and the Intercept used to pull no punches on that kind…

Greenwald was not claiming he is breaking the story. He was trying to shed light into the media blacklisting of the story. It is indeed Ironic that his story got blacklisted as well!

I think some editors are perhaps trying to avoid a repeat of the 'Hillary email/Comey announcement of 2016' scenario but didn't anticipate the Streisand effect.

In hindsight, best approach may have been to cover the story, get a sound bite from Biden denying that he benefitted, say there is no evidence he benefitted and leave it at that.