I'm gonna go with Greenwald's version of events on this one. This person seems fully compromised.
I thought his point by point rebuttal was pretty effective - he basically said "if you think my allegations aren't tempered enough, then suggest how to temper them further, don't just remove them entirely".
Again, it's the two-faced approach the media is taking. Rumor about Trump gets front page coverage, then someone asks about sources and you realize there are none. Try the same with Biden and you get "there is no story here. all disinformation".
Why two standards for two different leaders?
I'm not really interested in litigating who has the "correct" opinion or version of events, but I'm skeptical that the editors' stance of "If you'd like to publish this as is, we'd prefer that you use your other enormous and wide-reaching platform(s) rather than the one tied to our professional reputations" counts as true censorship. Millions of people read his story today.
Way to weasel out of that question.
"Glenn was censored from publishing in his own publication!"
"No he wasn't he tweeted it later."
That's a non-answer.
Edit: >"Glenn was censored from publishing in his own publication!"
This is neither a question or a quote from what I said.
"It would be unfortunate and detrimental to The Intercept for this story to be published elsewhere."
To me this is clearly saying: "that would suck but we can't stop you". Otherwise they would have told him not to publish it instead of just describing the ramifications of him doing it.
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/emails-with-intercept-edito...
The editor in no way seems compromised to me. There's a lot of very clear, straightforward and polite feedback. I suspect what we're seeing in the statement is a great deal of frustration, which is perhaps not surprising.
> I have to add that your comments about The Intercept and your colleagues are offensive and unacceptable.
That's putting it gently.
From his explanation:
> these Intercept editors also demanded that I refrain from exercising a separate contractual right to publish this article with any other publication.
From the emails:
> It would be unfortunate and detrimental to The Intercept for this story to be published elsewhere.
Where's the demand? It sounds like the EIC can't even express her own opinion to Glenn
As an example, I've read many "clear, straightforward, and polite" illegal eviction letters sent by landlords in the past few months.
They suggest a way to focus it more on core points which are well-substantiated and get a solid article out of it. They're not censoring his political views, if anything they're encouraging him to express them in an article indicting liberal media for going soft on Biden. They're trying to get a shorter, more tightly-focused article for publication. Which is to say, a more solid article.
That sounds like an editor doing their job -- editing is supposed to be the art of removing words, after all!
Greenwald sends first a polite reply, then a much less polite one that jumps to this vitriolic claim:
> I want to note clearly, because I think it's so important for obvious reasons, that this is the first time in fifteen years of my writing about politics that I've been censored -- i.e., told by others that I can't publish what I believe or think
Followed by insinuations that they're suppressing the story due to their political biases. It sounds like Greenwald can't accept that there may be legitimate explanations for why the content isn't focused or solid enough.
That's downright nasty and unprofessional.
By whose definition? I always viewed the reporter–editor relationship as a continuous bi-directional thing, e.g. suggesting different angles or stylistic changes. A person who takes an author's words in a one-way direction and decides which ones I'm not allowed to see is more accurately called a "censor".
The editor was telling Greenwald to focus on the story he could prove and tell effectively. That's not "censorship", that's good writing advice. He wanted to propagate flimsy partisan conspiracies instead.
If he wants to do that in his own name, that's fine. But he is not entitled to put the Intercept's reputation behind it.
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 points and pass it off as factual news. We have a term for people like this: tabloid writers or opinion commentators. This is a sad decline to see.
He's free to do whatever he likes in his own name -- and it sounds like this is the path he has chosen.
Why did you not believe the first side you heard but you believed the second? Or is your conclusion making sense of both?
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.
This reads as though you're implying The Intercept existed independently of Greenwald. They didn't, he co-founded The Intercept. He ought to (and I imagine, he does) have seniority on any editor.
I think it speaks volumes about him as a journalist and his journalistic integrity that he setup The Intercept as an outlet where he and his co-founders don't rule with iron fists. His submissions aren't treated specially. It's not his mouthpiece.
He may or may not have some contractual guarantee of independence, but his own statement of the situation indicates that he and his cofounders deliberately chose not to have the authority and responsibility that goes with running the show but to leave that to others so that they could keep being reporters.
If you don't think Bezos influences what WaPo writes, or that Murdoch influences what Fox writes, indirectly or directly, you're not looking hard enough.
For example, "Washington Post Ran 16 Negative Stories on Bernie Sanders in 16 Hours": https://fair.org/home/washington-post-ran-16-negative-storie...
It's like being the trash-man or cleaning the sewers of the information pipes. No one wants to do it. And of the few that do it have most interests and publish lies or predigested material spoon fed to them by their boss.
> His submissions aren't treated specially. It's not his mouthpiece.
These two statements are contradictory.
I am saying that while he is in a superior position at an organizational level, and thus has the authority to seize any responsibility he would like, he is noble for respecting the responsibilities he has delegated to his editors and not doing so.
He quit rather than allow them to perform those responsibilities. That's not respect.
I think they got it right when they set up the intercept. A journalist without an editor is hard to distinguish from a blogger. Part of the editors job is to say no. Sometimes, "not yet, this isn't ready". Sometimes "no, this isn't good enough". I suppose sometimes also "no, we aren't that publication" which is more problematic.
You can never really be your own editor.
Edit: I'm a moron and it just dropped a bunch suddenly. Was not removed.
Are they artificially inflated and then deflated to counter act “bot” behavior?
OR
are they organically inflated and then censored?
I just wish I could be a fly on the wall and know. I just can’t believe this would be a damning enough piece to artificially inflate unless there’s a serious game of reverse psychology going on behind the scenes
I want to hear their side of it as well. My guess is that there's a lot more to this story. My guess is if all his peers thought the claims were not solid enough to publish, there is probably a reason for that -- not simply a desire to "censor" someone they've worked with for years.
Remember also that the NY Post writer behind the original "Hunter Biden laptop" story refused to put their name behind the article, probably due to the flaws in the claims and evidence presented.