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Glenn Greenwald Resigns From The Intercept (substack.com) 374

Long-time Slashdot reader imAck writes: Glenn Greenwald announced via Twitter recently that he has resigned from The Intercept (and First Look Media), the former being a media outlet that he co-founded [in February 2014]. Purportedly, a recent attempt to constrain his editorial freedom was the incident that pushed him to make the decision. "Not content to simply prevent publication of this article at the media outlet I co-founded, these Intercept editors also demanded that I refrain from exercising a separate contractual right to publish this article with any other publication," an anonymous Slashdot reader quotes him as saying.

As The New York Times notes, Mr. Greenwald is "best known for his role in making public the National Security Agency documents leaked by Edward Snowden in 2013," which Slashdot covered extensively. "For now, Mr. Greenwald will be part of a growing number of journalists who have left major media outlets to try their luck at Substack, a group that includes Andrew Sullivan, formerly of New York Magazine, and Matt Taibbi, formerly of Rolling Stone."

Betsy Reed, Editor-in-Chief of The Intercept, responded to Greenwald's departure, saying there's a "fundamental disagreement over the role of editors in the production of journalism and the nature of censorship."
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Glenn Greenwald Resigns From The Intercept

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 29, 2020 @03:59PM (#60663504)

    Not a single mention in the summary about what's actually happening. Hint: it's about Biden.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ahodgson ( 74077 )

      https://www.zerohedge.com/political/glenn-greenwald-resigns-intercept-after-editors-refused-publish-biden-criticism

    • by klipclop ( 6724090 ) on Thursday October 29, 2020 @04:23PM (#60663606)
      The intercept has really fallen the last 12months or so. There was another Intercept drama when one of their highly regarded investigative journalists (I think Asian decent too) tweeted that all lives matter. Other Intercept employee really tore into him on twitter and was very toxic. I'm definitely not surprised Greenwald has decided to leave.
      • by klipclop ( 6724090 ) on Thursday October 29, 2020 @04:29PM (#60663620)
        The Intercept journalist is Lee Fang, and I read about the disgusting behavior by other Intercept employee from a Matt Taibbi article (The American Press is destroying itself). https://taibbi.substack.com/p/... [substack.com]
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

        The whole point of "black lives matter" is that the people claiming that life is sacred haven't been acting that way when it comes to black lives. Thus saying "all lives matter" is at best spectacularly ignorant of what black people go through on a regular basis, AND only underscores the actual message of black lives matter — that "all lives matter" is a foul, abusive, and manipulative lie until black lives matter.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • What's reliable about Greenwald is that he will always deny Russian meddling in US elections.

      That's problematic, given the investigations that have concluded otherwise.

  • Censorship is bad (Score:4, Insightful)

    by haunebu ( 16326 ) on Thursday October 29, 2020 @04:02PM (#60663518) Homepage

    Those who censor journalists because they won't adhere to a political narrative are un-American. We need to hear from all sides in order to make informed choices, particularly with an important election happening soon.

    Unfortunately the people who control our newsrooms and broadcast networks don't agree. They are all partisan political operatives now and their objective is to control the narrative.

    • Being informed sometimes only brings the revelation that you're screwed no matter what. Media are proponents of blissful ignorance.
    • by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Thursday October 29, 2020 @04:16PM (#60663582)
      "Censorship" is bad by definition. But is a publication exercising editorial discretion necessarily an example of that? Would you say the best scientific journal is one that allows just anybody to publish absolutely anything in it? Without editorial control a news outlet is doomed to be overtaken by the most extreme voices within it, until it loses credibility and flames out. Of course, bad editorial control is a shortcut to the same destination...
  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday October 29, 2020 @04:04PM (#60663532)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • are doing now, "the role of editors in the production of journalism"
  • by ebonum ( 830686 ) on Thursday October 29, 2020 @04:10PM (#60663556)

    Glenn Greenwald's sin was that tried to write about Hunter's laptop. Greenwald might one of the few real reporters left. He doesn't care if you are on the left or right. Screw-up, steal, lie, do bad stuff, etc. he wants to investigate.

    As of today: To ignore Hunter's laptop is wrong. To accept what has been found on Hunter's laptop as absolute truth is wrong. It will take months to check ip headers on emails, other servers, bank accounts, travel records, etc. to sift fact from fiction. If we refuse to investigate someone because daddy is powerful, we are done. We need to be careful not to accuse until the investigation shows wrongdoing.

    • by sorenstoutner ( 1303759 ) on Thursday October 29, 2020 @04:20PM (#60663592)

      It might take months to verify some aspects of the story, but the emails themselves can be verified in a few seconds using the DKIM headers. https://blog.erratasec.com/202... [erratasec.com]

      • by ahodgson ( 74077 ) on Thursday October 29, 2020 @04:25PM (#60663610)

        The emails have also been confirmed legit by Hunter's actual business associates.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by jeff4747 ( 256583 )

          Some emails have also been confirmed legit by Hunter's actual business associates.

          FTFY.

          When you're injecting bullshit into the media, you don't send 100% bullshit. You put some real things in there in an attempt to make the bullshit believable.

          For example, putting in some real emails has you not asking questions like, "The guy lives in LA....why'd he fly across the country with three broken laptops to have them fixed at a random shop in Delaware?"

      • by Ly4 ( 2353328 )

        As your link notes, they have NOT released the metadata for the emails.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      The whole story is so sketchy. The blind store owner calls up Rudy Giuliani rather than the FBI or anyone else. The laptop is rumored to have child porn along with all these "smoking gun" emails. Giuliani hangs onto the hard drive (full of kiddie porn) and claims he even sleeps with it. Just out of sheer coincidence the New York Post also endorses Trump.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by ahodgson ( 74077 )

        The store owner gave the laptop to the FBI a full year ago.

        He called Guiliani with a copy of the drive after the FBI sat on it for a year.

        • I’m sure the Mole Men were given a copy as well.

        • I heard someone in the FBI leaked a copy of the drive to guliani. Guess it would be good for journalists to do their job and report on it. I remember the huge media circus around the Trump dossier, so at the very least media orgs could get some clicks out of this story.
          • Do their job and report yes. That is also the angle Greenwald and Taibbi take: not that the laptop has earthshattering revelations on it but that journalists should do their job.
            In the meantime though journalists have adapted so thoroughly to a narrow corporate culture that what they consider their job is entirely different from what Greenwald thinks it should be.

          • You "heard"?

            How about you rely on the little information we have. The NYPost screenshot PDF was made in 2019 according to the metadata. How does that square with the "FBI leak" theory?

            Never mind that the FBI leak theory contradicts what both the laptop repair guy and Giuliani himself says.

            The noise you have to cut through while trying to discuss the authenticity of politically relevant documents...

        • So the FBI had a full year to investigate and never said a thing?

          • so many of Trump's supporters are so angry - the very same FBI claimed it cleared Anthony Weiner's laptop with its cache of tens of thousands of Hillary's emails in the space of a single weekend before the 2016 election.

            Furthermore, by dragging its feet on the Hunter laptop for over a YEAR, the FBI did the following:

            1. It kept the Biden family safe through the entire Democrat primary season, making Biden the "safe" choice for Democrats, whereas the disclosure might have blown-open a path for Warren or Biden

            • 2. It stripped the President of a ton of defensive material last December/January while the Democrats were impeaching him for asking what Hunter was up to in the Ukraine. That's called "exculpatory evidence" and it's a crime for the government to withhold such materials from a defendant in a trial.

              A) What does any of this have to do with the corruption of the con artist? Whatever happened occurred long before the 2016 election and has no relevance to the crimes of the con artist.

              B) So what if Hunter got a

        • by Vintermann ( 400722 ) on Thursday October 29, 2020 @05:33PM (#60663860) Homepage

          That's the story, but the little they've released of metadata contradicts it. The screenshot-PDF thing NYPost published seems to have been made in 2019.

        • The store owner gave the laptop to the FBI a full year ago.

          He called Guiliani with a copy of the drive after the FBI sat on it for a year.

          So you're saying the guy illegally made a copy of someone else's personal information and divulged it to someone? Cool. Left the lawsuits rain down.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Zak3056 ( 69287 )

        The original NY Post story (which the media seems to find completely disinteresting) contains a copy of the FBI subpoena for the laptop and an external hard drive. So apparently, it's evidence of something, though what that something is remains to be seen.

        The biggest problem I have with this whole issue is the timing. The date on the subpoena is 12/17/2019. Trump was impeached by the house on 12/18/2019.

        My mind absolutely boggles that a president was impeached while the FBI possessed evidence that was ma

        • My mind absolutely boggles that a president was impeached while the FBI possessed evidence that was material to the impeachment and said absolutely nothing. If the laptop is real, the impeachment for asking Ukraine to investigate is entirely unwarranted, and makes the Democrats look really, really fucking bad.

          Not really. Even if Joe Biden were trying to stop an investigation into Burisma - an idea that still seems completely illogical based on the facts - Trump still would've been overstepping his authority to request an investigation into a political rival, using defense aid as a bargaining chip in what could still be considered bribery. It would still have been a terrible abuse of power at minimum. The Ukraine aid scandal has many layers of wrongness to it, and the apparent bullshittiness of the reason for the

          • Even if Joe Biden were trying to stop an investigation into Burisma - an idea that still seems completely illogical based on the facts

            One fact that's often omitted is that the new prosecutor DID in fact close down the investigation, with no charges filed, within a year.

            It seems clear to me that both the new and old prosecutor were not exactly great, at either competence or integrity.

          • by Zak3056 ( 69287 )

            Trump still would've been overstepping his authority to request an investigation into a political rival, using defense aid as a bargaining chip in what could still be considered bribery. It would still have been a terrible abuse of power at minimum

            If I recall the Ukraine call correctly, the comment from Trump was something along the lines of Hunter Biden, Burisma, corruption, etc, that related to his father. If this laptop is real, and contains proof to that effect, it suggests that was acceptable for Trump to ask this--that there was real fire to the smoke. It's not investigating a political rival, it's investigating corruption in the executive branch of the US government. You can argue that it's the role of lesser functionaries in government to

      • 1. The repair shop owner is not totally blind - he can see very close-up and with magnification, which is why he works up-close on fixing hardware but is unable to swear to being able to recognize the face of the person who was across the counter from him when he turned it in for repair in 2019. The person who turned it in for repair did, however, sign the paperwork authorizing the repair (including the standard clause about surrendering abandoned stuff after a period of time) and the signature of the perso

        • 1. The repair shop owner is not totally blind - he can see very close-up and with magnification, which is why he works up-close on fixing hardware but is unable to swear to being able to recognize the face of the person who was across the counter from him when he turned it in for repair in 2019. The person who turned it in for repair did, however, sign the paperwork authorizing the repair (including the standard clause about surrendering abandoned stuff after a period of time) and the signature of the perso

          • If not picked up, it shops becomes the owner of the equipment left for repair after a certain time.

            This is standard, else shops would have to retain all equipment left there for ever.

            Once the shop became the owner, they could do what they want with it.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by jeff4747 ( 256583 )

          The guy in the shop looked at the contents of the laptop prior to his planned wiping and resetting which would precede his selling it as used/reconditioned equipment

          False. Reformat HDD and you're done. You don't need to poke around in the data, searching through emails until you find something interesting.

          Giuliani, being a VERY smart lawyer

          You should probably catch up on what he's been doing the last 30 years. Hint: He doesn't look all that bright anymore.

          had some experts he uses make multiple clones of the drive

          That the shop owner claimed he gave to the FBI. Then didn't give to the FBI. Then gave copies to the FBI, thus destroying the chain of custody so that they were no use to the FBI. No, Guliani's friends copied it. I'm sure the real ones will be f

    • by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Thursday October 29, 2020 @04:26PM (#60663616)
      To my thinking, here is the issue: Trump got elected by taking seizing control of the news cycle. In so doing has survived dozens or maybe hundreds of issues of at least as much significance as Joe Biden's son's emails. Now he develops this issue, hypes it, and demands that it be front and center in the election, moreso than, say, a couple hundred thousand Americans dying from Coronavirus.

      It is not a matter of suppressing facts. The facts have been covered in mainstream outlets. But as we have seen, facts have little or nothing to do with swaying public opinion. It is about volume. Repetition. Staying on-message. 4 deaths in Benghazi can be more persuasive than 234,000 deaths in the United States because facts and numbers mean nothing directly, unless they are covered proportionally.

      • That is an issue. But we can't become complicit in a coverup, and what happened still matters - even if it doesn't matter as much as Trump's brazen and public corruption, or his downright responsibility for the Covid pandemic - he disbanded the Global Health Security and Biodefense unit!

        The appearance of suppression only fuels the fire. Sure, be proportionate, but be honest.

        • But we can't become complicit in a coverup, and what happened still matters

          What happened? Was some crime committed? Did someone die? What coverup is going on?

          • by Uberbah ( 647458 )

            Is that a real question? The nation's 4th largest paper, and one of its oldest, has been locked out of its Twitter account until after the election. For reporting on a story more credible than any of the the Russiagate bullshit that's been dumped on the public for the last four years.

    • This. Hunter Biden was almost certainly up to no good, and there's at least enough corroboration - such as Hunter's signature on the work order, to know that there's something there, but we don't know what was truly illegal as opposed to just swampy, and to what extent - if any - Joe was involved in. But the bigger story by far is how much all news of Hunter's corruption is getting suppressed by most media outlets and tech companies.
      • It was almost certainly not illegal. The US government and supreme court have pretty much legalized corruption on this level - specifically, giving "access" for favors isn't even the appearance of corruption according to the court. Unless you're so stupid as to explicitly promise something and set a price tag on it (Rod Blagojevich!) you should be in the clear.

        No one benefits more from that legalization than Donald Trump himself, of course.

        • The DOJ just announced they have had an ongoing money laundering case open against Hunter Biden since 2019. So I think there's a decent chance that Hunter, at least, did something illegal - although whether it was the sort of thing that's actually convict-able or punishable by anything more than a fine, probably not a huge chance of it. And since Joe's been around in politics for almost 5 decades and all of his family members seemed to enrich themselves off of him, I have no doubt he was benefiting, but he
          • And since Joe's been around in politics for almost 5 decades and all of his family members seemed to enrich themselves off of him.

            Please tell us how Biden's family has enriched themselves off him. Did he make the U.S. taxpayer pay for his golf outings at his own properties? Did he make the U.S. taxpayer [foxnews.com] pay for water [vanityfair.com] when hosting foreign dignitaries at his own properties? Did he plan to host a major international meeting at one of his own properties [pbs.org] rather than a secure government location? Did his fami

            • *sigh* Why do so many people make the mistake of thinking that one side's malfeasance proves that the other side is innocent, or that anyone pointing out that one politician is guilty of something that must mean they think the opposite side is innocent? News flash: You can prove Trump is guilty as hell and it doesn't do a thing to prove that Biden is innocent.

              Here's a decent writeup of the swampiness of Biden's family, back from January: https://nypost.com/2020/01/18/... [nypost.com]
    • by tinkerton ( 199273 ) on Thursday October 29, 2020 @04:45PM (#60663678)

      Greenwald founded the Intercept with the explicit desire that mainstream and dissident journalism should coexist.
      Over the years though he found that mainstream journalism does not tolerate dissident ideas. With the whole Russiagate saga he found himself in a very difficult position already.(I would say he was the only one who was still able to look at it sensibly) but he could still hang on because he was in a way the face of the Intercept. This incident was only the last straw and it was going to happen sooner or later. The Intercept is not yet quite mainstream but getting there. It is no coincidence that Mehdi Hassan could move seamlessly from the Intercept to NBC.

      • Glenn Greenwald is a fashionable contrarian, like the kind we all went to college with.

        The "dissident" shtick worked for him when he was on the right side of the NSA stuff...which nobody seems to care about anymore, now that it's evident that GoogleFaceAzon know at least as much about us if not far more.

        Look at these articles and show me where Glenn did actual original reporting - i.e., talked to someone, then talked to someone else and cross-checked details that didn't match between the two sources. S

        • Greenwald tries to apply integrity and principles. The cynical mind is not able to see that and cannot distinguish between people with high integrity and others. Criticizing Greenwald is like an art critic criticizing a chair. if the design is sober you take the angle that it is stark, boring and cold. If the design is rich you take the angle that it is overloaded, pompous and confusing.
          Sometimes journalism is opiniated blogging. In this case the central theme of Greenwald's piece was that journalists colle

  • WTF? Why is there a "Comment Subject"? This isn't email!

    Maybe I've spent too much time on Reddit.

    Wow, yeah. What a time warp.

  • What is this about? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Orgasmatron ( 8103 ) on Thursday October 29, 2020 @04:18PM (#60663584)

    The editors are trying to bury the story about the documents from the Hunter Biden laptop and the Bobulinski interview/emails.

    Here is a direct link to the emails exchanged between Greenwald and his editors: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/emails-with-intercept-editors-showing [substack.com]

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • The blowback from yesterday's released Joe Rogan Experience? You get the preview of today with an interview earlier this week.
  • by onyxruby ( 118189 ) <onyxrubyNO@SPAMcomcast.net> on Thursday October 29, 2020 @06:56PM (#60664098)

    It's amazing how much the article tap dances around why he resigned. Greenwald was disgusted with the censorship of the Biden laptop story. The story has been verified in a range of ways from the lawyer asking for it back to the FBI confirming that they have possession of it. The DNI has point blank confirmed that the laptop isn't Russian disinformation and that there is no basis to think that there is any Russian disinformation around the story.

    People who got and sent emails on the laptop have verified them as accurate. Another person involved has testified to the Senate and provided additional corroborating evidence. Another source of evidence also corroborates the evidence from a third person. The Ukrainians also seized laptops from someone involved. The Bidens haven't denied any part of the laptop story as inaccurate. At this point in time nobody has refuted a single piece of evidence from the story. Pictures have been found, including some on Burisma's website that were still posted that show Joe Biden meeting people that he said he never met.

    The story doesn't just hit Hunter Biden as the bag man for Joe Biden, the story includes testimony that Joe Biden himself was directly on the take. The biggest story of all isn't the rampant corruption of Joe Biden and his family. The biggest story isn't the fact that we arguably have a real life Manchurian candidate.

    The biggest story is the media coverup of a massive story right before the election. People want to know, Tucker Carlson's interview of one of the business associates got 7.6 million viewers for an hour long interview. That's more people than who watched the NBA finals or an NFL football game and 4/5th's as many as watched the world series.

//GO.SYSIN DD *, DOODAH, DOODAH

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