Glenn Greenwald, a well-known American journalist who won the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Snowden affair, has written an article that refers to the alleged “emailgate” affair involving Hunter Biden and contains content that criticizes Democratic presidential candidate Biden and the inaction of the American mainstream media. Dan was denied publication by The Intercept, the investigative journalism website he worked for and co-founded. Greenwald announced his resignation on his personal website on October 29, and accused his articles of being censored by the website’s editors, who criticized his editorial freedom as being violated.
Greenwald, 53, one of the investigative journalists who first reported on Edward Snowden’s revelations about U.S. government surveillance programs, left the Guardian in 2013 and joined forces with Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, to create the investigative news site the following year. “Intercept.com”. Greenwald recently submitted an article entitled, “The real scandal: US media used disinformation to defend Joe Biden from Hunter’s emails” to the editor of the network regarding the allegations concerning Hunter Biden’s “emailgate”. In the article, he referred to emails allegedly obtained from Hunter Biden’s laptop published by the New York Post two weeks ago that were allegedly related to Biden’s work on Ukraine during his tenure as vice president, as well as other media reports about the Biden family’s alleged pursuit of business opportunities in China. He argued that the series of reactions that followed showed that the emails had inspired, among other things, a huge effort from the U.S. media, Silicon Valley giants and the intelligence community to actually band together to suppress the dissemination of these stories.
Shortly afterwards, Greenwald announced on his personal website that he was resigning from “The Intercept”. He also wrote in the article announcing the news that “the same trends of suppression, censorship, and ideological homogenization that have plagued the national press generally have engulfed the media outlets I co-founded and ultimately led to the censorship of my own writing.” He claims, “The editors of The Intercept violated my contractual right to editorial freedom by censoring an article I wrote this week. They refused to publish the article unless I removed all portions critical of Democratic presidential candidate Biden, who had the strong support of all the New York-based editors of The Intercept and participated in the suppression.”
Greenwald said, “I don’t disagree that they disagree with me about Biden as this evidence shows: as a last-ditch effort to avoid censorship, I encourage them to criticize my views by writing their own articles and letting readers decide who is right, which is what any confident and healthy media outlet would do. But modern media doesn’t spread dissent, it silences it. So (their) censorship of my articles, rather than engaging in it (the conversation), is the path chosen by these pro-Biden editors.” He suggests, “But the sick, illiberal and repressive mindset that led to the bizarre spectacle of me being censored by my own media is by no means unique to The Intercept. These viruses have contaminated virtually every mainstream center-left political organization, academic institution, and newsroom.”
It’s also worth noting that Greenwald published his back-and-forth with the Intercept’s editors around the controversial article on his website so that good people could read it and judge for themselves. In response to his allegations of censorship, the editors of The Intercept similarly published an article the same day stating that Greenwald’s decision to resign from the network stemmed from a fundamental disagreement about the role of editors in news production and the nature of censorship. According to the article, “Greenwald demands the absolute right to decide what he wants to publish. He argues that anyone who disagrees with him is corrupt and that anyone who tries to edit his words is a censor. Thus, there is the absurd charge that the editors and reporters of ‘The Intercept’, with the exception of Greenwald, have betrayed our mission to engage in intrepid investigative journalism because we have been seduced by the Biden presidency. A simple look at the stories published by ‘The Intercept’ about Biden is enough to refute these claims.”
According to the editors, “Greenwald’s account of his departure is riddled with distortions and inaccuracies – all designed to make him look like a victim rather than a tantrum-throwing adult. It would take too long to point out all these problems here, but we intend to correct the record promptly. For now, it’s important to note that our goal in editing his work was to make sure it was accurate and fair. While he accuses us of political bias, it is he who is attempting to recycle the dubious claims of a political movement – the Trump campaign – and wash them into a news story.”
They also shot back that, “We have great respect for Greenwald as a former journalist (in his role), and we remain proud of much of the work we’ve done with him over the past six years. It was Greenwald who strayed from his original journalistic roots, not the ‘interceptor network.'” According to the article, “We have no doubt that Greenwald will continue to launch new media ventures where he won’t face any collaboration with editors – this is the era of (paid subscription and fan-sponsored platforms) Substack and Patreon. In this case, it makes good business sense for Greenwald to position himself as the last true guardian of investigative journalism and to smear his longtime colleague and friend as a partisan hack. We get that. But facts are facts, and ‘The Intercept’s’ fearless, rigorous, independent journalistic record speaks for itself.”
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