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My Resignation from the Intercept

greenwald.substack.com

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Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#981

Post by neilpointer »

Greenwald is chiefly concerned with making sure that we all know this story might have legs. And Biden might be a bit corrupt. In fact he might have engaged in behavior that's almost identical in scope and corruption as the sitting President. He also wants you to know that he doesn't like innuendo and insinuation, despite that being all that the currently known facts about Hunter's laptop supports. He also wants us to know that the US media is biased towards Biden, but he's definitely not biased towards Biden despite this style of corruption being demonstrated by both candidates for President.

Does Greenwald have any similar exposes of Trump's alleged crimes? It's the same thing in 2016. At worst, Hillary Clinton's crimes were precisely the same as the Bush admin using a private email server to conduct official business.

Implicit in all of this is a glaring bias of "we all know that Republicans do bad stuff but I expect better of Democrats so they're the _real_ bad actors here."

How bout this? It's unethical to help destroy Biden's shot at the Presidency even if he may have engaged in unethical behavior, simply because Trump is unethical in all of these same ways _and more_. Dispassionately pursuing the facts of this story serves more harm than good and that's an uncomfortable truth if you value objective journalism. Glenn seems to be unwilling to accept that the US media learned the lesson of 2016 which is that they got played once and they don't want to get played again.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#982

Post by atmosx »

lordnacho wrote: post #316
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…

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…

> This is why the Economist

Do you actually read the economist? The publication has downgraded quality enormously since 2004, when I first start reading the economist as a subscriber and not casually.

For the economist to make sense you have to accept reality in very simplistic terms, e.g. "US/NATO good, Iran/Russia/China bad". If you can live with this simple worldview, than the ecconomist is fine.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#983

Post by atmosx »

jerry1979 wrote: post #712
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…

NYT also helped sell America into Iraq.

Apparently this is something that has totally stuck with the NYTimes. I respect them (for a mainstream media publication), but no one can get over the fact that they lied blatantly at the time.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#985

Post by zjaffee »

ritchiea wrote: post #876
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?

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…

Greenwald released a story that got Lula Da Silva released from prison and seriously damaged the Bolsenaro regime in Brazil.

He has an outstanding reputation all around the world and is trusted by left leaning allies all over the world doing interviews with countless heads of states or opposition leaders.

He also was a reputable journalist even before the Snowden stuff do to work that investigated many of the evils of the Bush administration.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#986

Post by zjaffee »

marrone12 wrote: post #600
eric_b wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She attacks him personally without ever refuting any of his points. She hand waves that they will correct the record "in time." Her response is riddled with sensationalist language. I'm gonna go with Greenwald's version of events on this one. This person seems fully compromised.

A friend of mine works at the Intercept and has said that Glenn has been going off the rails for the past half a year and has alienated the entire staff at the Intercept, not just this specific editor. Apparently he's been planning to leave for a while, and from my friend's POV, this is Glenn's way of making himself the martyr and getting good publicity for himself and his patreon.

Yeah because he was left with no other choice, the total fuck up of the Reality Winner story massively hurt his reputation with intellegence community whistleblowers.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#987

Post by zarkov99 »

intended wrote: post #891
zarkov99 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree there is a huge opportunity for a trusted institution to do journalism. But who would anyone trust? The incentives in the media point towards pandering and outraging. Left to the shareholders a news organization is mandated to maximize short term profit in whatever way it can. So capitalism is out. Perhaps a benevolent billionaire could support such an effort? But again, who would trust him? Its a pikle.

This is among the oddest conversation for a startup focused board. What is the market size ? Recently there was a debacle in India where a news channel corrupted the ratings system. In the discussions that followed, it turns out that the news industry pays peanuts. If there is no real market, and just passion projects and idealism- then what’s going on? Matter of fact India is a good example of what happens. Small in…

There is a market, but probably not as good as the market for selling influence and peddling outrage.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#988

Post by zarkov99 »

gfodor wrote: post #241
zarkov99 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree there is a huge opportunity for a trusted institution to do journalism. But who would anyone trust? The incentives in the media point towards pandering and outraging. Left to the shareholders a news organization is mandated to maximize short term profit in whatever way it can. So capitalism is out. Perhaps a benevolent billionaire could support such an effort? But again, who would trust him? Its a pikle.

I think you just need to find a way to align incentives. Capitalism can work just fine. The reason we're in this situation in part is because the skills and resources you garner for delivering journalism happen to overlap with those needed to deliver political tabloids. We don't worry about air conditioner manufacturers magically becoming insurance companies, because its hard to do so. So ultimately if you align ince…

Not every problem can be solved by the free market. You need to be driven by something more than greed to become the eyes and ears of the nation.

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#989

Post by throwaway127849 »

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.

As an Indian who reads NYT's international coverage, I disagree with your comment. NYT's India reports have been excellent and evidence based. The right wing extremism is indeed on the rise[1].

Any report I see, they are presenting their statements with ground report backed by statistics, usually by Govt. data.

[1] https://www.umass.edu/newsoffice/article/umass-economist-fin...

Re: My Resignation from the Intercept

#990

Post by rufus_foreman »

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

Here's how Frederik deBoer puts it (https://fredrikdeboer.com/2020/10/30/only-the-club-remains/):

"The social capture of media plays a huge role in how media operates, dictating what gets reported and which voices are heard. To some degree this is overt – if you you have drinks with the right people in media, that improves your ability to get published. That’s a fact; just a fact, a plain fact. And if you retweet the right people’s tweets that helps too. But there’s a deeper and subtler element to this. What you must show is not that you are talented, or that you’re principled, or that you’re hard working, or even that your arguments are correct. You have to show that you are one of them. You have to have the right social and cultural signifiers. They are innumerable and stretch from performing the right woke posturing and commenting on the correct TV shows to (especially, especially) telling the same kind of shitty, inside-dealing jokes, the kind that say to everyone “I am a member of a club, and it is very important.” Professional, political, and moral considerations have been consumed. There is only idenitification with the group, now. The sole criterion for having a successful career in media today is the degree to which you can signal to the crowd that you are one of them, that you share their values and petty obsessions."

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