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My Resignation from the Intercept

greenwald.substack.com

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Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#961

There seems to be a premise in the USA that if Russia has a hand in true information coming to light, the bigger story is about Russia's hand in it, and not the information itself. This narrative has been seen a lot, and often times it is invoked as the default narrative whenever things are being claimed in a particular political direction. I would like to question this at a fundamental level. At what point does the…

The obvious point is that for a country to have a democracy that's free from manipulation by foreign entities it needs to strongly act against foreign influences attempting to interfere. If media publications credulously publish explosive accusations in the month before an election then you have a very easy way for foreign entities to influence elections.

Even if you buy Bobulinski as a credible witness it's difficult to discount the fact that his allegations have been deliberately timed to be as politically damaging for the election as possible, whilst giving the smallest amount of time to fact check his story. Specifically since the allegations could've been brought to light years ago. We don't have to be credulous - we all know that the unsubstantiated accusations can be damaging even if they turn out to be utterly baseless (which is what seems to be the case given the lack of coroborating evidence).

To put this in context - the 2016 relevation of Hilary Clinton's emails in the last weeks before the election coincided with a shift in the polls that pushed that election into a tossup, and when actually investigated, were found to be duplicates of emails that she had already been investigated for.

It seems natural given that we know about this dynamic, the reasonable thing is to raise your threshold for publishing accusations in the last weeks before an election.

If it is true that these accusations really are as damning as Bobulinski claims then they'll be coroborated and investigations will start, and frankly we've got 3 months before Biden even takes office. But those should be real criminal investigations, not baseless accusations made in the 2 weeks before the election - or more reasonably, made at the time that Bobulinski claims these conversations took place over a year ago.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#962

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read it, or at least as much of it as I could get through. Good writing and due diligence are the last words I would use to describe that piece. It was more of a rant than an article. Glenn has been pushing the boundaries more and more every year, and it's not surprising that this is the article that finally made his editors draw a line in the sand. I even think he has several good points buried in there, but it re…

If the best you can do is call him names, just don't weigh in. The article may be a form of a rant, but it is meant as a opinion, and an articulate and specific opinion at that. Everything he says is either very believable, obvious, or verifiable. You may not like what he is preaching, but give examples of what is incorrect, and why, or just go home. Generally, labeling ("screed from an unhinged man"), hyperbole ("as…

>The article may be a form of a rant, but it is meant as a opinion

That's the whole problem. Greenwald doesn't call himself a columnist, he calls himself a journalist. The Intercept doesn't publish his articles as opinion pieces, they publish them as news. You can't publish that article as a news piece with any sort of credibility.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#963
post #466

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

Kinda like the editor(s), who are doing the job of an editor.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#964

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?

Greenwald didn't have to do any work for the Snowden stories, Snowden approached Greenwald. And from my understanding, Snowden didn't approach Greenwald because he was the "best" journalist to break the story. Snowden had an existing relationship with Barton Gellman of the Washington Post who Snowden also leaked to. But Greenwald was willing to put an encrypted key in the leaks to help Snowden prove he was the leaker…

no support for those assertions provided. Never heard /anything/ like that before. Color me suspicious, sure. But if you've got the supporting evidence I'll change my tune...

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#965

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NBC article is focused on an anonymously drafted report, which was mostly a dump of open source intel. The article criticizes that report for using a fake persona as its author. The initial disseminator of the report (who may or may not be the author of it as well) cites privacy and fear of retribution as reasons for publishing anonymously. What the NBC article does not do is address or refute any of the facts in…

Nothing against you or GP, but this illustrates my personal difficulties with "the news" perfectly. As most of us here know full well, in modern application development, most of the time, there are MANY ways to accomplish particular "thing" that will WORK, but I want to find the most-efficient and most-maintainable way. So when I need to find an approach to something new, I'll search and read many things about it, un…

Oh I agree 100%. My mind has been completely hijacked for the past week as the election comes to a crescendo. My priority when consuming information is to get some idea of the known and unknown truths. Unfortunately, the current climate makes this difficult to ascertain in real time. There is an absolute onslaught of new info every hour (not just from the Bannon/HB “drip” campaign, but also more general news), and nobody is objectively summarizing it.

The only choice is to immerse myself in this deluge of information and try to sort out the truth from propaganda myself. It’s infuriating that so few journalists are doing this for me.

I’ve never seen anything like this, on both sides. On the right, we have a carefully managed PR campaign that is, despite its agenda, appearing increasingly credible but also manipulating our attention. On the left, we have a unification of the media apparatus, the DNC and the FBI, actively suppressing information and misdirecting our attention.

I’m so glad Glenn Greenwald has staked out a position in this environment, because it really is an existential fight for truth. Now that Greenwald is on the case, I hope it forces the left and the Biden campaign to respond to this story. It’s not going away.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#966
post #778

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…

Even Fox News wouldn't run the story because it wasn't supported by facts. Run what story? Fox news has been covering the hard drive since it was released. And yes, no concrete evidence of wrong doing, but if you read Glenn's email, he clearly states that "something smells rotten" and the editors response is "we won't even allow pointed questions about Biden". Glenn is offering the Biden camp more benefit of the doub…

They wouldn't break the story. They're news division is covering the fact that a story exists, not the underlying story.

Their talking heads on the other hand...

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#967

The emails are interesting. I’m surprised Greenwald’s editors give such detailed written feedback instead of, say, over the phone. The language used offers some scope for compromise, but in general it’s pretty forthright. In my experience the back and forth of an email chain thread will only further entrench positions rather than engender persuasiveness. We all know this, right? It’s nothing new and it happens all th…

Do you do code reviews over the phone? In a professional setting, why would feedback of this nature not be in a written format? Editor feedback is often very detailed ... why would you have a phone call to say "you used your instead of you're on line 40".

If a consequence of the review were to be the E9 / founder resigning — and resigning publicly and noisily — then yes: I’d do it over the phone.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#968
post #809

Earlier quoted context omitted.

..

Am I reading that wrong or was it a DIFFERENT document, not the "evidence" on the laptop, that is attributed to an AI-generated persona? Both the Aspen/Typhoon document and the laptop hoax documents involve Hunter and China, but are they connected in any other way?

As a black man I agree with the homosexual author. I support Biden but the hard drive is clearly legitimate.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#969

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…

I don't care were the emails came from. If a Russian agent with a secret invisibility cloak powered off the freedom of the countries they invade sneaked into Hunter's room at night, killed his dog, and stole his laptop, I don't care.

Maybe the repairman story is parallel construction maybe it's not, but I think the emails are real and Biden's Campaign response is a pathetic attempt at pointing to a scarecrow. It's as bad as Chinavirus in my hierarchy of sins, it's fuel for America's systemic racism and exceptionalism which are the energy that fuels the reactor that will make this country blow up.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#970
post #494
post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. They have been attack dogs of one political party or the other. But its always been this way. Social media ( especially twitter ) has shown people that journalists are political actors, not dispensers of "truth". They are part of the power stru…

A nihilist regarding truth, I see. You might want to watch this video to see why that's a dangerous attitude, and one that plays into the hands of morally unscrupulous actors and foreign adversaries: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nknYtlOvaQ0

> A nihilist regarding truth

Nope. I believe in truth. My point is that the news industry isn't in the business of truth. They have never been. The news is in the propaganda business. They exist to form opinions. It's why pretty much every news company around the world was formed by a politician, banker, industrialist or government. If trump created "Real News Company", I'm sure you'd say only the naive would view such a company as a purveyor of truth right?

> You might want to watch this video to see why that's a dangerous attitude, and one that plays into the hands of morally unscrupulous actors

You might also look up the history of the news industry, manufacturing consent, etc. And the morally unscrupulous actors are the major news companies.

The real danger is not from those who question the news, it's from those who blindly view it as the truth.

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