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.
It seems evident that the relationship has been incredibly tense in their emails over the story. It goes from "here's some suggested edits" to "you clearly don't want to work here"/"I'm quitting" in what feels like seconds.
Well. If so, they made it easy for him. TheIntercept is over. People seem to forget who Greenwald is and why he co-founded TheIntercept. He has more credibility than all these editors combined. Good luck for them.
greenwald had a lot of credibility for sure, and I have given him the benefit of the doubt several times, but he just eroding that credibility. I would say that there isn't much of it left now...
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.
My impression was the opposite. Greenwald went around slinging wild accusations of censorship and bias, and the Intercept's response was fairly measured in comparison. They even included an acknowledgement of respect for his work.
Huh. I saw Glenn's response as pretty measured, except for the follow up after his first email where he gets a bit heated.
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".
Glenn Greenwald was able to post his article to substack in its unedited form and link it to his 1.5 million Twitter followers earlier today. From what I can tell, there was a disagreement about what The Intercept thought was appropriate for their platform and what he felt should be published under that banner.
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.
Their statement on Greenwald publishing elsewhere was:
"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.
Or perhaps “That would make us look bad because our founder is credulously slinging bullshit Russian disinformation without making any journalistic effort to validate the story, calling into question the credibility of past work we have published”
Aha, it was just "will be published" when I read this. Thank goodness for the WWW, since when this happens to TV reporters they can't turn around and host their own TV station.
why would any sane publication publish an unverified story that just before an election attacks the only candidate that isn't trying to dismantle democracy?
A lot of the commentators don't WANT sane publications. For this exact reason. They like that candidate and would rather burn sane journalism down then see him lose.
People that support political propaganda don't get a right to be offended by fact-checking in credible journalism. People that support fascist leaders don't get to complain about "censorship." Not now, not ever.
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.
This is by far the most interesting piece of info to me. Greenwald seems off his rocker and I'm shocked that he is the one publishing this thinking it backs up his case. What censorship? Not once did they say this couldn't be published elsewhere.
> I have to add that your comments about The Intercept and your colleagues are offensive and unacceptable.
Honestly looks like he was looking for a reason to leave and created his own excuse.
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
In his response, he implies that “detrimental” is a term that would carry some legal weight if they were to sue him for publishing it himself, so it’s essentially a veiled threat. If she were to actually write “I demand that you not publish this”, knowing that he might publish their email convo, it would guarantee that her words prove his point about the censorship.
If anything, Greenwald comes off as compromised by his own political biases. The editor says fairly gently that there are concerns with poorly-supported claims and omitting key information -- such as the media reporting on corruption claims and the fact that media outlets have not been given access to the supposed hard drive of emails. This results in a meandering and potentially misleading article that leads readers to conclusions it does not actually support.
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.
> editing is supposed to be the art of removing words, after all!
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".
You clearly know how easy it is to take someone's words out of context and twist them into something they aren't. A good editor brings clarity and brevity.
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.
The editor was trying to stop Greenwald to publish a story that puts in bad light the candidate preferred by mainstream media. All the rest, in those emails and here is mental masturbation, which serves to prove that even smart people decide first and find the justification later. There is nothing noble or ethical about it. This is a campaign play.
Greenwald's version is basically attacking all his co-workers as democratic partisans and contains no actual evidence, so I'm not sure what line you're drawing here
I'm gonna go with Greenwald's version of events on this one. This person seems fully compromised.