You're right that it's not how this works. Media organizations are not interested truth or accuracy of their stories, but simply how many ads and subscriptions the stories can sell. And that's not the say they are motivated by greed - even worse, they are often motivated by missionary-like zeal to promote a cause. So of course it would follow that they have no interest in publishing anything disagreeable to their readership.
However, Greenwald's argument definitely should be how it works if a media organization cares about truth and open debate. In this case, it seems very hard to believe that a story -- written by a credible journalist, with a long track record, who literally founded the organization -- was garbage.
I think Glenn hoped to create a media entity that regarded truth as the measure of merit of a story vs. how well it promoted a cause and ads/subscriptions. Now that the experiment has failed so obviously, good for him for moving on.
Seems like if they only cared about clicks and ads they would've ran the article.
From my position, they exercised the bare-minimum duties of any good editor to shut down stories they don't believe meet the standards they set for themselves.
And for exercising that duty, they are leaving clicks, ad impressions, and probably a good amount of money on the table.
They're free to make that choice if that's their true assessment of it. But when Greenwald publishes his piece, if it actually is not in fact a garbage piece, they're going to look extremely bad and biased.
He said he'll be publishing it on his blog very soon. He may have submitted an incomplete draft to The Intercept for review, and is still finishing it up.
This doesn't really strike me as a cheap attempt to sway elections. Rather, it makes IMHO a pretty reasonable case for the idea that media - even independent publications - in the US are extremely polarized and biased when it comes to politics (albeit that's kinda beating a dead horse at this point).
With all this said, IMHO the style of the narrative also contributes to the ever increasing aggravation: why are people so focused on what can or cannot be construed as fodder for character assassination, when ideally an election is supposed to be about discussing the merits of different platforms. Investigative journalism certainly has its place, but in the context of the imminent elections and the political landscape, it would do a whole lot better to simply publish a down-to-earth for-dummies side-by-side comparison of candidate platforms, to dissuade pitchfork-induced action and encourage proper level-headed consideration by undecided voters.
Yes it's crazy how polarized popular U.S. media is. I'm from Germany but regularly check CNN and Foxnews since a year. I'm astounded how Foxnews is strictly positive about Trump and CNN is so positive about Democrats and Biden. (More in-depth magazines are more open though)
But being realistic, at least until the upcoming election is over they've reached a point of no return. 4 more years of Trump would exclude U.S. from international foreign politics.
It starts out reasonable enough. When it gets to Burisma, though, it falls off a cliff:
> But that claim [that Biden wanted the prosecutor fired so his replacement would better fight corruption] does not even pass the laugh test. The U.S. and its European allies are not opposed to corruption by their puppet regimes. They are allies with the most corrupt regimes on the planet, from Riyadh to Cairo, and always have been. Since when does the U.S. devote itself to ensuring good government in the nations it is trying to control? If anything, allowing corruption to flourish has been a key tool in enabling the U.S. to exert power in other countries and to open up their markets to U.S. companies.
I don’t even know what to say other than that that’s an absurd caricature of US foreign policy. Yes, the US sometimes allies itself with corrupt regimes. That doesn’t mean it’s not interested in fighting corruption, especially in a potential future NATO member.
I read the entire draft and I’m going to disagree with you. Rather than write a lengthy diatribe, I’ll start with my main point. This is all very neat and tidy and while it may all be true, we live in a political climate where foreign governments interfere in elections by spreading disinformation. In that case, an editor is absolutely correct to push back, make suggestions and ensure their otherwise respectable publication is not used as a tool to spread more disinformation the week before an election.
> we live in a political climate where foreign governments interfere in elections by spreading disinformation. In that case, an editor is absolutely correct to push back
This is paternalistic to the extreme. Do we get to vote on whether we want such a society or is it just imposed by editorial fiat?
> spread more disinformation the week before an election.
You read the draft. Could you point out the explicit falsehoods to me?
Or are you saying we should stop the spread of inconvenient opinion pieces?
I vaguely understand the paternalistic side of your argument, but if you want to abandon editorial rigour, we have something already built for that. It’s called social media.
If social media doesn’t turn your crank, start your own publication and establish your own editorial fiat. HOWEVER, there’s a problem - if your editing sucks, you won’t attract enough readers to maintain high standards. That’s kind of the shit part of the free market - you can’t just go push a substandard product and scream about “my freedom”.
Ultimately, this draft needed some work and if you go through this thread, you can read some of the Intercept’s own comments. Personally, I found the section about possible disinformation to need more meat. The connection between the Vice President and the company is too tenuous. The article needs to cover WHY experts think it is disinformation, even just to strengthen the claim that it isn’t.
It doesn’t much matter what you want to read, but an editor still had to find balance and appropriate context. Otherwise, publications suck...
> I vaguely understand the paternalistic side of your argument, but if you want to abandon editorial rigour, we have something already built for that. It’s called social media.
Without getting into the irony of the fact that the article we're discussing was blocked on social media, I want to make clear: I don't want to abandon editorial rigor.
But I do think that electioneering concerns should be irrelevant to the context of whether you present information in the public interest. Just as reporting on Trump's tax returns or the Podesta emails were in the public interest, so too are the Hunter Biden emails.
There has not been a historical problem of major publications publishing Russian falsehoods. The "fake news" epidemic is mostly quickly stood up sites propagating on Facebook.
Nor did I see any evidence that Glenn was connected to a Russian disinformation effort. If that were to change (say, if he were found to be receiving payments from the Russian government), then I would support removing him as a writer outright.
> an editor still had to find balance and appropriate context.
Agreed. My claim here is that the editorial staff of The Intercept failed at this goal and their suggestions were not balanced.
I have experience in publishing and have edited some very complicated pieces in my time so I imagine that I look at this situation (and the draft of the Greenwald article) through a different lens.
On the subject of the Hunter Biden emails, there are a lot of problems with reporting on them. The first is that when you look at the full spectrum of Giuliani’s involvement, the laptop genesis story is a little weird. The second is that copies of the hard drive have not been widely disseminated to news rooms.
The laptop genesis story is relevant and the Greenwald article needed to devote more analysis just because of how weird it is. And as for the hard drives, journalists have their own sets of egos and biases.
Both of those points are relevant if you want to question why the media isn’t reporting on them. The laptop genesis story is weird enough to call for fact checking and verification but the hard drives aren’t available. Sadly that makes for weak articles and removes any exclusive coverage motivation to cover the emails.
We've lived in a world where foreign governments have interfered in elections by spreading disinformation for literally as long as there's been elections. That doesn't give the media an excuse to ignore corruption across half of the aisle.
You’re correct but journalists need to do better. This article isn’t strong enough for publication, the editor made reasonable suggestions and frankly, it sounds like a tantrum.
> Greenwald has in his contract that he's not subject to editorial oversight
Really? Where can I inspect that contract? Clearly, the terms that allow him to publish elsewhere if TI doesn't want to publish his stuff that he claims exist seem at odds with the claim that there are terms that he is free to publish whatever he wants in TI without TI exercising editorial control.
I suspect that the story he is painting about the contract terms is misleading, as it makes no sense as presented.
What we have right now is Greenwald's word, which given that A) I can't think of a time he's published an outright falsehood, and B) the letter from the editor didn't deny any of the facts but instead just jumped to describing the process as Greenwald having a "tantrum", I'm inclined to believe at face value.
> Clearly, the terms that allow him to publish elsewhere if TI doesn't want to publish his stuff that he claims exist seem at odds with the claim that there are terms that he is free to publish whatever he wants in TI without TI exercising editorial control.
Or it's a clause that if they mutually agree that TI isn't the best forum for an article Greenwald has written, he's explicitly allowed to take it to another forum, in contrast to the normal staff writer contract provisions.
Thanks for engaging with me friend - I promise to reply but this will take a bit of time. Unfortunately, I have to step out.
I promise to write a proper reply and don’t want you to take my silence as a sign of disrespect. It’s been fun engaging with you and I appreciate your brain - I’ll edit this comment when I get back.
Seriously thanks, this has been a lot of fun!! :)
Edit - Hey friends, meowface genuinely doesn’t deserve those downvoted. They are smart - I don’t agree with them, but they’ve made some strong points in excellent ways.
Everyone on every side is being downvoted (and then upvoted, and then downvoted, and then upvoted, and then downvoted some more...), it seems. I don't mind at all; it comes with the territory. Anyone entering into a fray like this knows what to expect. If someone strongly disagrees with me, I actually think they probably should downvote me.
First off friend, I appreciate you - both for taking the time to engage and teach, and also for how well you articulate your arguments. I realize that this entire thread has become polarized, but if you would like to continue this conversation, my email address is in my profile. I can't promise to agree with you, but I will treat you with the respect you're due and try to better understand your point of view.
As for the comments about downvotes, call me naive, but I yearn for a world where we comment when we disagree but reserve up and downvotes for statements about the quality of a comment. I don't agree with you, but I upvoted you because you made me think. Ultimately, that's what I really look for from Hacker News. I don't know everything, but I have my own unique experience. If I'm wrong, please correct me....:)
Incidentally, if you want to continue this engagement off site, let me tell you a bit about my perspective. I used to publish an indie magazine that ended up winning some awards. At one point, I was tasked with editing a submission by a high ranking gang member who wanted to write about why he doesn't like the police and why his gang is a better choice for kids. I had to tell a story to make advertising dollars and it was a hell of a story. But our magazine ran contrary to a municipal bylaw so I had to somewhat tone it all down. It was complicated and to this day, I believe that I failed the story. Anyways, I think I bring a slightly different perspective (as do you) and I would appreciate the opportunity to learn from you.
So, Hunter was possibly selling access to Joe, for the possibility of influence? If so, did it work? Hunter is a troubled man (remember Billy Carter?). I only care about what Joe did, if any of this is true.
That’s where I think this article gets weak. It seems to hinge on “nobody else is reporting it so it must be true.” The connection between the Vice President and the company isn’t strong enough. And excluding the possibility this is disinformation just makes the connection that much worse.
I feel like I’m missing about 500 words. If Greenwald would tighten his prose and strengthen the persuasion, this article could rule.
>The connection between the Vice President and the company isn’t strong enough. And excluding the possibility this is disinformation just makes the connection that much worse.
>If Greenwald would tighten his prose and strengthen the persuasion, this article could rule.
Come on friend, if you're going to pick and choose from my words, please be true to my original point. I feel that this article is missing about 500 words of facts, but that length could be trimmed down by removing some extraneous words. I'm more guilty of using extra words than anyone so I'm not qualified to judge, but I am qualified to recognize it when I see it. Crap, I used to publish a magazine - I have a little more experience in this area than the mean.
The draft is weak. It completely avoids explaining why several experts conclude it’s disinformation. Instead, it uses a very complicated set of coincidences with only one actual fact - Biden had something to do with getting one prosecutor replaced.
That’s flimsy journalism. Expecting better out of a journalist is far from voluntary ignorance.
Is there anywhere I can find a clear explanation of expert's reasoning to conclude it's disinformation?
It seems like the information is really up in the air, it will take time to determine what conclusions from it are legitimate and false. The information itself is quite clearly real, at least, I haven't seen any specific piece of information in regards to this claimed as false, just the whole subject referred to as "disinformation".
Here is a letter signed by 50 former high ranking intelligence officials - it's easy to absorb and if you're interested, it will give you plenty of threads to Google.
An editor is absolutely right to push back on a writer potentially publishing disinformation about a candidate before an election, but I disagree that this contains any disinformation or acceptance of disinformation. It covers a lot of ground, but the media censorship parts seem incontrovertible, and the parts specifically critical of Biden seem pretty balanced to me. He seems to hedge a lot of what he says and provides many perspectives and sources.
We should be very careful about disinformation, but another form of information warfare and "active measures" which I'm sure Russian intelligence is and has been deploying is the spread of skepticism of true information and belief that any or all information could be disinformation. Division, discord, fear, uncertainty, and doubt are the goals; not just falsehoods. All of these erode a sense of shared reality. Just as any claims about a political figure need support, so do claims of disinformation.
So, I think it's diatribe time. Could you quote the parts of the article (with full context) that seem like disinformation?
You know, we might not agree on this but I like you and think you’re very cool. :)
I’ll write you the reply you deserve but have to step out. Again though friend, you’re a good person and I respect your mind.
Edit - Seriously friend, I’m having a rough day in my personal life. I feel really lucky that I found you to engage with and get my mind off of things. You’re cool. Thanks for being cool. I’ll pay you back one day for this.
For the record, I read the email exchange Greenwald published and I am a little more sympathetic to the editors now. I don't totally agree with their criticisms, but I think Greenwald unnecessarily escalated into ad hominems before even giving them a chance to reply, and I think there was a valid discussion to be had there before there was no choice but to throw in the towel. He should've just kept the part of the email with the editor comments vs. article comparisons and left out the rest. I understand why he felt like he was being pressured, though.
I still don't think there's anything like blind acceptance of disinformation in the article, but he could've hedged certain parts a bit more.
Also, I kind of regret some of my earlier comments. I still think the way the media and Twitter handled this is absolutely ridiculous, and I really don't think there's a disinformation aspect to this article (bias and dis/misinformation are very different), but I kind of jumped to the conclusion about the rigor of the article after only reading about half of it (mostly the parts about the media). I think the truth about the article's rigor probably lies in the middle between your and my initial opinions of it, and similarly I think proper rigor kind of lies between Greenwald's and the editor's opinions. I prefer Taibbi's reporting on it (and Taibbi's reporting in general).
And to be clear, as I mentioned in my other comments, I've never seen very good evidence of corruption on Joe's part; my concern is pretty much just with the emails and the media's handling of them.
edit: Actually, I just went ahead and removed my very initial comment and another one. I was kind of shooting from the hip, though I definitely still stand by the parts about the media, and probably most of my other comments so far. But I might change my mind tomorrow about some of the other comments, and this definitely isn't the ideal platform for an extremely lengthy and careful debate.
This is tabloid level trash. No different than the email-gate nothingburger that dogged Hillary or made up the Birtherism claims against Obama. Greenwald should be ashamed.
The draft itself also has a not insignificant amount of leaps of faith that are not helpful in the current environment:
"Beyond that, the Journal's columnist Kimberly Strassel reviewed a stash of documents..."---this is an opinion article, why isn't the newsroom covering this explosive story?
"All of these new materials, the authenticity of which has never been disputed by Hunter Biden or the Biden campaign"---absence of a denial is not proof of its validity.
"Facebook, through a long-time former Democratic Party operative, vowed to suppress the story pending its “fact-check,” one that has as of yet produced no public conclusions."---an unnamed source told me that Facebook is really trying to push the election to Biden…
Even if Greenwald is sincere in his attempts to daylight the truth, he increasingly seems unaware or unwilling to accept that he might be or is being used as a useful idiot by foreign agents.
>"All of these new materials, the authenticity of which has never been disputed by Hunter Biden or the Biden campaign"---absence of a denial is not proof of its validity.
He explicitly explains why he thinks it does serve as some additional evidence of such, and I agree with it. It's not proof, but it's evidence:
>Why is the failure of the Bidens to claim that these emails are forged so significant? Because when journalists report on a massive archive, they know that the most important event in the reporting's authentication process comes when the subjects of the reporting have an opportunity to deny that the materials are genuine. Of course that is what someone would do if major media outlets were preparing to publish, or in fact were publishing, fabricated or forged materials in their names; they would say so in order to sow doubt about the materials if not kill the credibility of the reporting.
>The silence of the Bidens may not be dispositive on the question of the material’s authenticity, but when added to the mountain of other authentication evidence, it is quite convincing: at least equal to the authentication evidence in other reporting on similarly large archives.
----
>Facebook, through a long-time former Democratic Party operative, vowed to suppress the story pending its “fact-check,” one that has as of yet produced no public conclusions."---an unnamed source told me that Facebook is really trying to push the election to Biden…
>Just two hours after the story was online, Facebook intervened. The company dispatched a life-long Democratic Party operative who now works for Facebook — Andy Stone, previously a communications operative for Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, among other D.C. Democratic jobs — to announce that Facebook was “reducing [the article’s] distribution on our platform”: in other words, tinkering with its own algorithms to suppress the ability of users to discuss or share the news article. The long-time Democratic Party official did not try to hide his contempt for the article, beginning his censorship announcement by snidely noting: “I will intentionally not link to the New York Post.”
Seems like a temper tantrum to me, even if the journalism is legitimate. It could very well be these claims are clickbait for the journalist to strike out on his own without the publisher.
I'm reading the emails and they seem to be perfectly reasonable edit suggestions (I'm a person that's familiar with the editing process)- it points out that the article is attempting to accomplish too much with evidence that is actually vague and suggests increased focus to critique that liberal media isn't holding Biden's feet to the fire. Asking for an article to be narrowed down in scope is a perfectly good suggestion as an editorial board, especially in news articles where too much stuff can make the article ineffective. Furthermore, the editor is nothing less than professional/polite, while the response is full of wild accusations like "What's happening here is obvious: you know that you can't explicitly say you don't want to publish the article because it raises questions about the candidate you and all other TI Editors want very much to win the election in 5 days."
I think Greenwald is probably right regarding his accusations in the email, but I agree that they weren't necessary to include, at least so early in the discussion process. He did seem to react unnecessarily harshly, before his email even received a reply.
As you say, he was the one who first began displaying the unprofessional behavior. He probably should have just sent like half of his follow-up email (the citations of the email compared to the article) and given them a chance to reply. But I also understand why he felt he was being unduly pressured and why staying there wouldn't have been wise for him.
> I'm a person that's familiar with the editing process
I am also very familiar with the editing process. I'm not saying that the editing suggestions are beyond what you would ever see in an editorial context, but I would never characterize them as "basic edit suggestions."
Much of the quibbling in the edits to me suggests ulterior motive, like the rejection of the idea that there has been "suppression" of the story (there obviously has).
And if you're familiar with the editing process, you'd know that edits are not always completely apolitical, I know people who have been asked to make edits for political reasons in major national publications.
I think it is hard to claim this is just equal editorial scrutiny, given the publication of multiple false claims around the Hunter Biden story (ie. "very likely to be Russian disinformation", etc.).
> the editor is nothing less than professional/polite
To me, I don't necessarily always side with the actor who appears to be more professional, though I do agree that Greenwald comes off as rude in the email.
"While he accuses us of political bias, it was he who was attempting to recycle a political campaign's — the Trump campaign's — dubious claims and launder them as journalism."
The Intercept said it had no doubt that Greenwald would "launch a new media venture where he will face no collaboration with editors — such is the era of Substack and Patreon."
"In that context, it makes good business sense for Glenn to position himself as the last true guardian of investigative journalism and to smear his longtime colleagues and friends as partisan hacks," the Intercept statement reads.
"We get it. But facts are facts and The Intercept record of fearless, rigorous, independent journalism speaks for itself."
> The Intercept said it had no doubt that Greenwald would "launch a new media venture where he will face no collaboration with editors — such is the era of Substack and Patreon."
Any way you look at it, this is a terrible response. Jealous much? “People are willing to pay with actual money for Greenwald’s writing. Can you imagine?!? How shameful!” Even the post-blog-revolution news media companies don’t get it.
The Intercept did have a record. It was in large part due to Greenwald. He’s leaving, so with him goes a large part of their reputation.
He's not wrong. But, it seems the American public is completely obsessed with the October Surprise. Everyone is waiting for that last minute piece of information that will flip the entire election on its head. And why not? Social and mass media have been training us to trawl for the "bug scoop" for decades now.
The truth is, news doesn't happen overnight. If anything sufficiently important is to be determined true, it needs to happen over a course of weeks or months, as people process the information, debate with each other, and come to a consensus on what it means for the country. Just because we can have this conversation with smaller and more rapid steps due to technology doesn't mean that we can get to the destination any faster.
So, in my opinion, burying this story is wrong. Amplifying it is also wrong. If Trump truly believes this is corruption, he should open an investigation, one that will be widely mocked as a political hit job and will still not finish until well into the next term. But, if you care about your country, you do it anyway. Not to win an election but because it's the right thing to do. I guess we'll see what happens.
I'd posit that even if they already voted, people are still checking the news to see if there is late breaking news that will affect the broader opinion, even if they "know" that it won't affect theirs.
Anyway, my broader point is that Greenwald, and likely many others, feel immense pressure to get this out before the election, so that people have "all the relevant information", but the truth is, we never have all the relevant information because information exists in a continuum not a binary space.
"We have no doubt that Glenn will go on to launch a new media venture where he will face no collaboration with editors — such is the era of Substack and Patreon. In that context, it makes good business sense for Glenn to position himself as the last true guardian of investigative journalism and to smear his longtime colleagues and friends as partisan hacks."
Honestly, coming from not known who ether party was in this before this hackernews post. The intercept comes off as in the wrong to me. However, I could be being manipulated.
I am interested. Do you think these emails will come out as faked? I think even if they are real it doesn't change who should be president. But shouldn't we always be watching our elected leaders closely? What is the line between not publishing something because it is wrong and not publishing something because it might be true, but it goes too far against your beliefs.
We should absolutely watch elected leaders very closely.
The problem however is the convenience of whatever bullshit-du-jour is on the menu just in time for the election, by an administration that's been crying wolf at every corner since before it even started.
You can't get your "leader watch" news from agencies that are so blatantly corrupt, especially when they conveniently protect the leader who's got it way worse than the one they're accusing.
That this is a discussion is mind blowing to me. Your house is on fire and half the people in it are shit-talking the firefighter.
The point is, mainstream media (also known as fake news) spent the last 4 years baselessly "crying wolf" on a daily basis, completely discrediting itself in the process.
> Do you think these emails will come out as faked?
DKIM is already confirmed by an independent security researcher: https://github.com/robertdavidgraham/hunter-dkim. This is why Biden is not denying this, he knows the entire _three_ troves are real, dick pics and all. Graham, by the way, stated on October 14 that he's voting for Biden.
Are you claiming that Glenn Greenwald, one of the most respected journalists, is publishing a garbage article?
I... kind of think this wouldn't be the first time?
Greenwald rose to fame on the back of Snowden's revelations, and I don't want to downplay how important that was. But much of his journalism since then has had, well, a pretty conspiratorial no one else is writing this because THEY don't want you to know the TRUTH! slant to it, and he is always specifically -- often, it seems, exclusively -- concerned with failings of The Left, either "The Left is baselessly accusing The Right of something" (cf. Russian interference with the 2016 election) or "The Left is suppressing an important story that makes them look bad" (cf. Hunter Biden's magical mystery laptop).
And, look, sometimes THEY don't want you to know the TRUTH! is true! It was true with Snowden! But the boring, pedestrian reality is that most of the time when someone is the lone voice with the "big story" that other major news outlets are "suppressing," it's not because those other outlets are afraid to offend their Deep State, it's because the story doesn't have a lot of there there.
I mean, the Hunter Biden laptop story starts with asking us to believe that he dropped off three personal laptops for repair at a small computer repair shop, in a different state than he lived or worked in, and then forgot about those laptops, and that then those laptops were subpoenaed by the FBI and the shop owner illicitly made copies of the laptop's hard drive and that made its way to a tabloid -- the only publication that would run it, apparently -- by way of Rudy Guiliani. I'm just saying, it's not hard to imagine reasons other than they're part of the deep state conspiracy, man! that the Washington Post took a pass on this.
The thing is, this kind of story appeals to Greenwald because he's become -- or maybe always was -- the kind of person who doesn't believe he's doing his job properly unless he's taking the contrary position. Well, actually, there's no evidence Russia wanted Trump to win the election, they really wanted Clinton. Well, actually, there are no far-right conspiracies promoted by Trump, just far-left conspiracies against Trump. As New York (the magazine) put it a couple years ago,
It is of course important to keep one’s own side honest and to prevent conspiracy theories or bad arguments from taking hold. The problem is that the search for anti-Trump conspiracy theories is the whole of Greenwald’s analysis. He sees, or allows himself to see, nothing but crazy charges against Trump, to the point where there is no room in his field of vision for Trump himself. And so it seems obvious for him to casually observe that the conspiracy theories of the far right have disappeared, when in reality they have more power and influence than ever before.
That was written in 2018,[1] but I don't see much sign of that attitude changing since. Glenn is now stomping out of The Intercept because they challenged him to back up his "well, actually, this Hunter Biden stuff is a really big deal" contrarian take, which proves that they're part of the deep state conspiracy theory too, man.
I know this is harsh on Greenwald. He's absolutely correct that the conspiratorial mindset isn't something found just in right-wing circles; it's something I noticed occasionally many years ago when I was a more regular listener to Pacifica Radio. The problem is that he has repeatedlty demonstrated his own susceptibility to that mindset, and it's a real hard one to break out of. Removing himself from all editorial constraints and pushback is... not likely to help.
> But much of his journalism since then has had, well, a pretty conspiratorial no one else is writing this because THEY don't want you to know the TRUTH! slant to it,
Not only since then, but also before then. Unclaimed Territory was sensational first, news second. I mean I read and liked it, post-9/11 everyone was desperate for any views not drip-fed by the Bush administration. But if you had told me this guy's resignation from his own news startup would be pitched as the presidential-crisis-cum-journalistic-scandal in the 2020 elections I wouldn't've believed a word.
I am. The Burisma affair was genteel corruption and I don't care about it at this point, especially since the Senate majority didn't give AF about corruption that made that look quaint.
Right now it's an existential referendum and if we choose survival we can return back to to such matters.
I agree: this site, despite its many other good qualities, is a freaking disaster regarding these nonsense "censorship" claims, either regarding the NYPost story, or this one.
All these BS stories are coming out right now, with days to go in the election, so that they can't be debunked and/or placed in context. It's "but what about her e-mails" all over again.
I don't think it has anything to do with HN specifically, more to do with this bullshit reaching the mainstream. And HN is full of mainstream people (much as those same people would like to think they aren't).
It's bizarre. All these people have fallen hook line and sinker for blatantly obvious far right conspiracy nonsense, but I guess it's easier to see from the outside looking in?
That story contradicts nothing I wrote. It actually borders on the ridiculous. Did AI fake the crack photos too?
"Rosemont Seneca Bohai Morgan Stanley bank records show Hunter Biden, while simultaneously serving on Burisma’s board, received $708,302 between June 2014 and October 2015 from Rosemont Seneca Bohai, for undisclosed reasons, in a series of payments that ranged from $10,000 to $150,979 per month"
You say this like its a "gotcha." Surely you've heard of the Streisand effect?
Imagine that you are in charge the the Biden campaign, and that the story is false. What action would you take? It looks like its not gaining traction on its own, would you really direct the public's attention back to it?
Maybe because whistleblowers like Snowden actually provided the world with tons of evidence that conspiracies like this are sometimes far from fiction.
Or maybe because your company's been complicit in feeding high-engagement videos and content to users, indiscriminate to whether the type of engagement is toxic or the damage the videos do, sending those users into a vicious, cult-like rabbit hole and disconnecting them from reality.
Or you'll have to remind me where Snowden, possibly the most thorough and careful whistleblower of the last century, talked about the "deep state" or any of that QAnon shit.
The revelations with Snowden were in the details of things people already knew at a high level. People knew about the NSA's Echelon program, but didn't know things like how they tapped the un-encrypted intra-datacenter links.
I think everyone's talking past each other. QAnon, "the Deep State", Snowden, Hunter Biden's emails, Twitter's censorship, and the media's non-reporting are all barely related, here. Let's maybe talk about things on a case-by-case, factual basis.
I also didn’t want to believe, but the amount of evidence is staggering and now there is an active FBI investigation. At the very least the press should report that.
You know who actually has an endless amount of evidence of corruption, fraud, and general awfulness, and has had it for years, not a mere convenient pre-election period?
Your current administration.
If your country burns, it takes a lot of other countries with it. You'll understand that we actually want what's good for you.
What evidence? There was a dossier, which has been discredited as false. Inform yourself here, from one of the “trusted” sites that won’t even run the Hunter Biden story:
That's nothing. One of NYTimes top stories for the past 4 years was a fake dossier and "Russian collusion" that didn't exist. And they got us into a multi-trillion dollar war in the Middle East, too.
No, the President of the U.S. at the time got us into a multi-trillion dollar war in the Middle East. The NYT simply reported on the documents that the administration used to justify that war.
The "fake" dossier actually existed, as did its contents. What got leaked was an unfinished internal draft that was never meant to be released. Buzzfeed was the company that published the dossier; the NYT simply reported on the dossier after it became a big issue. Given the nature of the allegations, multiple agencies in the U.S. attempted to verify the allegations. They were able to corroborate some but not all of the allegations in the dossier, as discussed in the Mueller Report.
> Greenwald is not known for publishing "garbage pieces".
Reputation trails actions. Overall Greenwald seems like a remarkably average journalist with strong rhetorical chops who lucked into a couple good stories. But he's spent the past few years squandering that social capital on a mix of conspiracy and irrelevance, and this may be his bankruptcy.
> He gave up his career as a lawyer to do what he does.
This means absolutely nothing. If anything lawyers aren't especially known as paragons of truth! (And that's fine for a lawyer where the adversarial system holds, but can make you a bit shit as a journalist.)
> Greenwald seems like a remarkably average journalist
Sure, bud. Greenwald, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist is all of a sudden "average", just because he dared to ask questions and expose near-airtight censorship by mass media and Big Tech.
OK - and the NYT has won six Pulitzers this year. Every news organization that choose not to run the story has a dozen.
Your seemingly single criterion for trust still doesn't give the weight to Greenwald.
Mediocre people win prizes, and smart people do dumb things. Greenwald is not a reliable person to carry the entire institution of journalism on his shoulders as you keep insisting he does.
(Newsweek, by the way, has been owned and operated by Olivet / David Jang's Community cult for several years now. It has no connection to the previous magazine of the same name.)
They published the Steele dossier with ZERO evidence. It's now been completely discredited as a Russian plant the Obama administration knew was from a Russian asset.
The US government has officially said there's no Russian involvement in the recent Biden leak and it's been vouched for by Tony Bobulinski who definitely has close ties to the Biden family, yet it's not publishable?
That's as partisan as it gets and deserves to be called out.
EDIT: Do the downvoters have a reason other than ideology, tribalism, and conspiracy theories?
Can you share the sources which convinced you of the report's veracity? Those sources which I have seen mostly or totally debunked it so it would be interesting to see what made your sources come to a different conclusion.
[edit] I must say it is both amazing as well as abhorring to see a post asking for sources to a statement which goes counter the current narrative to be downvoted (currently at -4) as if the question is somehow offensive. Wake up, folks, the truth shall set you free. Seeking for it is not a crime, at least not yet. [/edit]
Even the investigating agents themselves were buying liability insurance and saying it was a BS hit job:
> “[D]oing all this election research – I think some of these guys want a [C]linton presidency,”
> “[T]he new AG might have some questions….then yada yada yada…we all get screwed,”
> “I’m tellying [sic] man, if this thing ever gets FOIA’d, there are going to be some tough questions asked,” one agent wrote. “[A]nd a great deal of those will be related to Brian having a scope way outside the boundaries of logic[.]”
> “[J]esus,” an agent wrote back. “[T]rump was right. [S]till not put together….why do we do this to ourselves. [W]hat is wrong with these people[?]?
Wikipedia also had a section on the russiagate conspiracy which states:
> The Special Counsel's report, made public on April 18, 2019, examined numerous contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials but concluded that, though the Trump campaign welcomed the Russian activities and expected to benefit from them, there was insufficient evidence to bring any conspiracy or coordination charges against Trump or his associates.
Mueller understood his mandate was to investigate before the fact conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign. When people allege "collusion" between Trump and Russia, they are not talking about a before the fact conspiracy, but rather tacit and sometimes explicit coordination between the two groups to benefit one another.
Mueller kept his investigation very narrow in that sense, and failed to pursue various avenues of investigation, including not even looking at any financial ties between Trump and Russia (of which there are many, as confessed by Eric Trump). In fact the Mueller Report notes that the Trump, his campaign, and his associates obstructed the investigation by lying and destroying evidence. So a finding of insufficient evidence doesn't really put the issue to bed. Mueller didn't even interview Trump in person, and Trump lied to Mueller in his written responses to questions.
In fact, the Republican-chaired Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released a later report which expands on the Mueller probe, and it more or less confirms what those who alleged "collusion" were saying all along. Remember, the original position Trump took was that there were zero contacts between his campaign and Russia. No contacts, no deals.
The Mueller Report and later the SSCI report lay out over 100 contacts between Trump and Russian intelligence and government officials. In particular:
- Trump's son, son in law, and campaign manager met with a convicted Russian Spy in Trump's house on behalf of the Russian government. The Trump Campaign was very eager to meet with her. The spy laid out specific terms: in exchange for dirt on Hillary Clinton, they expected the relaxation of sanctions levied by the Magnitsky act.
- Paul Manafort in fact turned over internal campaign data to a Russian intelligence officer. From the Senate Committee: "The Committee found that Manafort's presence on the Campaign and proximity to Trump created opportunities for Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump campaign," ... "The Committee assesses that Kilimnik likely served as a channel to Manafort for Russian intelligence services, and that those services likely sought to exploit Manafort's access to gain insight in to the Campaign".
- In the trial of Roger Stone, we learned that Stone actually gave Trump advance notice to Trump of hacked DNC e-mails, as Stone was in direct communication with Julian Assange. Trump had previously been briefed by the FBI about foreign interference in the campaign, and he failed to alert the FBI of the incoming hacked information. In fact he kept quiet about this, and instead not only did he trumpet the hacked e-mails at every opportunity, he actively encouraged the hackers to try to obtain more information.
- From Michael Cohen we learned that Trump's claims of having no active deals in Russia was a lie, when in fact Trump was attempting to get a tower built in Moscow, complete with a penthouse gift for Vladimir Putin. It was reported by Buzzfeed that Trump instructed Cohen to lie about this, and while Mueller disputed this, we later learned that in fact when Cohen lied to Congress about the existence of this deal, he was doing so with the understanding that it was Trump's wish for him to do so. Whatever Cohen's motivation though, we do know Trump wanted to keep it a secret from the American people and he himself lied to all of us about the existence of a deal.
- Fast forward to Trump's actual presidency, and he has done everything he can to show deference to Russia, from pushing for Russia to rejoin the G8 (from which they were expelled for the invasion of Crimea), to making blundering strategic decisions in Turkey to Russia's benefit, to siding with Putin over the assessment that Russia was not responsible for hacking the DNC, to pushing the idea that in fact it was Ukraine that was responsible for hacking the DNC.
And after all of this, there still has not been a rigorous accounting of Trump's financial ties to Russia, of which there are many, and there has not been a counterintelligence investigation into the relationship. Not by Mueller, not by the House, the Senate, the FBI, or any other body. Given all of the above and everything we know about how Trump operates.
So was there a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia? No, probably not, and this was not alleged by most of us who had an issue with the relationship between Trump and Russia. Was there collusion? I think the Manafort incident alone proves yes. Trump's campaign manager hands over internal campaign data to what the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence characterizes as a "Russian Intelligence Officer", while the GRU is hacking the DNC and targeting voters with a psyops campaign. Yeah, that's collusion.
The dossier is a mixed bag in terms of accuracy and rigor, but I find it interesting most people focus on "no collusion" but ignore all the rest of the claims. Like:
> The Mueller Report backed "Steele's central claim that the Russians ran a 'sweeping and systematic' operation ... to help Trump win".[7] James Comey said:
The bureau began an effort after we got the Steele dossier to try and see how much of it we could replicate. That work was ongoing when I was fired. Some of it was consistent with our other intelligence, the most important part. The Steele dossier said the Russians are coming for the American election. It's a huge effort. It has multiple goals ... And that was true.
>The US government has officially said there's no Russian involvement in the recent Biden leak
DNI John Ratcliffe, who is a Republican partisan, said that on Fox News. He was also just caught lying to the FBI director in making a partisan assessment (with zero to back it up) in a statement about election interference by Iran last week. He's not exactly a credible and dispassionate actor in all of this.
The FBI also concurred with the DNI’s claim that the IC has no intelligence to suggest the laptop is Russian disinformation, by saying “we have nothing to add.” Additionally, a senate committee has determined and announced that they believe the evidence Bobulinski presented is authentic.
"We have nothing to add" is not "concurring". You're making a leap of logic there. It's the same thing as saying "we can neither confirm nor deny".
The "Senate Committee" you speak of is chaired by Ron Johnson, who is a staunch Trump ally and again, a rank partisan.
In order for the general public to have any degree of trust about this, there is going to have to be some authority who is at least not a partisan who can speak with authority to actual facts. Not vague "assurances" with no evidence. This issue is way too political to trust Republicans, especially after Benghazi (went nowhere after dozens of investigations by partisans) and Hillary's e-mails (went nowhere after a whole year of hyping it up as the worst crime ever by a politician). This entire thing just smells like the next big Republican freakout over nothing.
What are the factual inaccuracies in the parent comment? I am new to this topic and it would help me if you pointed to what specifically he said that was inaccurate and why you believe so.
Your position is the same as everyone here: You haven't read the story and have no information whatsoever to claim that they are being good editors or not.
Until we have a story to look at, it's anyone's guess if he's being a good journalist or they are being a good editor.
>> Media organizations are not interested truth or accuracy of their stories
As someone who works in media (not on editorial side but on digital), I can assure you thats you are wrong.
Most media orgs have a log of rigor and fact-checking that goes into their stories. The editorial side is typically (not always in some places) shielded from the business pressures (for better and for worse).
Its someone else's problem to worry about clicks etc.
Greenwald stopped being a credible journalist awhile ago. Just look at what he was pushing these last few weeks.
I have a lot of respect for his early work but he went on a weird tangent.
The fact that this incident was newsworthy is a useful indicator that this kind of case is rare. That's a reason to trust media organizations, not to distrust them.
Similar: sometimes I see people saying "this publication had to retract or correct a story, which is proof that you cannot trust them!". The fact that they posted a correction is a reason TO trust them. You should be suspicious of publications that never post corrections, not publications that do.
They didn't win the lawsuits...most of them were dismissed, and in the few that were not they settled for each side paying their own costs. (Most of their targets were publicly traded companies, so those legal settlements would have been disclosed in their SEC filings.)
"On July 24, 2020, The Washington Post settled the lawsuit with Nick Sandmann. The amount of the settlement has not been made public."
"CNN settled the lawsuit with Nick Sandmann. The amount of the settlement has not been made public."
"a judge rejected NBC's attempt to dismiss the lawsuit against it."
How are most of them dismissed if none were actually dismissed? Reaching a settlement is also considered 'winning' the suit in these kinds of cases.
No, reaching a settlement is not considered "winning" a suit. Companies generally settle when their legal fees for going to court would exceed the amount of the settlement. Since we know the rates that WaPo's lawyers charge, we can put a theoretical cap on the amount of the settlement. Less his own legal fees, Sandmann might have walked away with $25,000.
As for "most of them dismissed," 30 of 33 claims against WaPo were dismissed. In other words, Sandmann lost on 30 claims, and settled on 3 of them. Two of his other lawsuits were dismissed by the court, and the only lawsuit still alive is the NBC suit. That's not a legal victory; a motion to dismiss at this stage of a lawsuit assumes that everything the plaintiff said is true without taking into consideration any competing facts.
"No, reaching a settlement is not considered "winning" a suit. Companies generally settle when their legal fees for going to court would exceed the amount of the settlement."
I was going to write exactly this but didn't because it seemed too obvious to do so. The plaintiff ALSO has legal costs if they go for a ruling. This is why I said a settlement is usually considered a victory. If both parties already agree on the outcome then going trough the legal procedure is a waste of time and money. Only if sandmann's lawyers didn't agree on the settlement money then it would be advantageous to push for a ruling. Hence this could be considered 'winning' the suit even though there is no such thing on courts. only rulings(Ex, in favor of) and paying the legal fees of the other party.
> Reaching a settlement is also considered 'winning' the suit in these kinds of cases.
That's in interesting conclusion. If CNN settled for a few thousand dollars to make Sandmann go away, did he really win? Either way CNN looses, they either have to pay for lawyers on appeals or settle out of court and end up where we are.
Pretty much every lawyer whose chimed in on the subject says that Sandmann is unlikely to have won a significant amount. So he "won" in the sense of some PR points with people who already thought he was in the right. That's probably about it.
"If CNN settled for a few thousand dollars to make Sandmann go away"
No one would sue and settle with three different news agencies over 'a few thousand' if That was the only money on the table their lawyers would have pushed for a court ruling.
Then care to explain the wildly unfounded allegation that Trump called fallen troops suckers for dying for their country pushed by unfounded anonymous sources, when critics of the president like Bolton went on record saying the claim was bogus?
hmmm, was that about the same time he came to understand that the Authoritarian left that was taking over the Democrat party was illiberal, regressive, and not at all out to advance individual freedom like the "liberals" used to be?
Did he "stop being credible" when is politics separated from your own?
Greenwald has always been left-libertarian, it seems today the "left" only has room for left-authoritarians
> simply how many ads and subscriptions the stories can sell.
I don't think this is actually right. I think owners of news media companies want influence more than profit. I don't think Bezos is buying news media for the profits... The influence helps for their other goals.
Techies, thanks to a bunch of dumb twitter talking heads, seem to think journalists are just rolling in bundles of cash from clicks. They're not. The vast majority of them, even the ones with upwards of 20k twitter followers, barely make any money. Influence is definitely more important to them than cash.
Power. You can profit from power, but you could also genuinely believe that the world will be a better place if only everyone did what you said. In both cases you need power.
This appears to be correct. Most media outlets now are activists pretending to be journalists, run by businesspeople who care about revenue more than truth.
This has been true since the advent...I remember reading about the wars between Hamilton and Jefferson in the papers way back during the young years of the US.
None of this is new. It's way overamplified now, and everyone cries censorship and fascism when it suits them.
Our expectations of objectivity (NPOV) is very recent and abnormal.
I'd like many many more Clay Shirky style analysis of print, broadcast, and social media, followed by a 100 crazy notions for novel NPOV organizations.
Many media organizations care quite a lot about their reputation as well as their effect on society.They want to report honestly and give an accurate picture of the word. Including Glenns paper, that's why he joined it.
Glenn seems to have picked a grudge(against establishment Dems) over commitment to solid truthful reporting
> Media organizations are not interested truth or accuracy of their stories, but simply how many ads and subscriptions the stories can sell. And that's not the say they are motivated by greed - even worse, they are often motivated by missionary-like zeal to promote a cause.
Why do you believe Glenn is immune to this interest? The entire point of this is to promote his newsletter.
> I think Glenn hoped to create a media entity that regarded truth as the measure of merit of a story vs. how well it promoted a cause and ads/subscriptions. Now that the experiment has failed so obviously, good for him for moving on.
How do you know that "truth" is not the measure of merit for this story? You haven't read it; you're simply taking Glenn at his word.
You have no way of knowing that they had violence in mind. A "purge" of the media could just as easily mean millions of subscribers cancelling their subscriptions, causing the media companies to collapse.
From the HN Guidelines: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
However, Greenwald's argument definitely should be how it works if a media organization cares about truth and open debate. In this case, it seems very hard to believe that a story -- written by a credible journalist, with a long track record, who literally founded the organization -- was garbage.
I think Glenn hoped to create a media entity that regarded truth as the measure of merit of a story vs. how well it promoted a cause and ads/subscriptions. Now that the experiment has failed so obviously, good for him for moving on.