The Patriot Post® · Lefty Journalist Quits Leftmedia Outlet Over Censorship
On Thursday, journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote, “I sent my intention to resign from The Intercept, the news outlet I co-founded in 2013.” You might ask, So what? Some leftist reporter has called it quits. Well, he’s done so because of the rampant media censorship of stories investigating Joe Biden’s corruption. Greenwald explains:
The final, precipitating cause is that The Intercept’s editors, in violation of my contractual right of editorial freedom, censored an article I wrote this week, refusing to publish it unless I remove all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, the candidate vehemently supported by all New-York-based Intercept editors involved in this effort at suppression.
The censored article, based on recently revealed emails and witness testimony, raised critical questions about Biden’s conduct. 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.
I had no objection to their disagreement with my views of what this Biden evidence shows: as a last-ditch attempt to avoid being censored, I encouraged them to air their disagreements with me by writing their own articles that critique my perspectives and letting readers decide who is right, the way any confident and healthy media outlet would. But modern media outlets do not air dissent; they quash it. So censorship of my article, rather than engagement with it, was the path these Biden-supporting editors chose.
Greenwald expands that critique not only to The Intercept but to the Leftmedia as a whole:
Like anyone with young children, a family and numerous obligations, I do this with some trepidation, but also with the conviction that there is no other choice. I could not sleep at night knowing that I allowed any institution to censor what I want to say and believe — least of all a media outlet I co-founded with the explicit goal of ensuring this never happens to other journalists, let alone to me, let alone because I have written an article critical of a powerful Democratic politician vehemently supported by the editors in the imminent national election.
But the pathologies, illiberalism, and repressive mentality that led to the bizarre spectacle of my being censored by my own media outlet are ones that are by no means unique to The Intercept. These are the viruses that have contaminated virtually every mainstream center-left political organization, academic institution, and newsroom. I began writing about politics fifteen years ago with the goal of combatting media propaganda and repression, and — regardless of the risks involved — simply cannot accept any situation, no matter how secure or lucrative, that forces me to submit my journalism and right of free expression to its suffocating constraints and dogmatic dictates.
“Suffocating constraints and dogmatic dictates” — that about sums up the Left these days. And leftists are even silencing their friends if they dare to get “off message.” (Ask former New York Times columnist Bari Weiss.) Greenwald is no conservative (he was Edward Snowden’s pal on the NSA revelations), but he is a real journalist. And he published his Biden piece here, much of it centered on how the Leftmedia has become Biden’s Praetorian Guard, pushing demonstrably false information rather than asking even basic questions of the man who wants to become president of the United States.
What should journalists be curious about? Greenwald explains in his censored draft story:
All of these new materials [on Hunter Biden’s laptop], the authenticity of which has never been disputed by Hunter Biden or the Biden campaign, raise important questions about whether the former Vice President and current front-running presidential candidate was aware of efforts by his son to peddle influence with the Vice President for profit, and also whether the Vice President ever took actions in his official capacity with the intention, at least in part, of benefitting his son’s business associates. …
The publicly known facts, augmented by the recent emails, texts and on-the-record accounts, suggest serious sleaze by Joe Biden’s son Hunter in trying to peddle his influence with the Vice President for profit. But they also raise real questions about whether Joe Biden knew about and even himself engaged in a form of legalized corruption. Specifically, these newly revealed information suggest Biden was using his power to benefit his son’s business Ukrainian associates, and allowing his name to be traded on while Vice President for his son and brother to pursue business opportunities in China. These are questions which a minimally healthy press would want answered, not buried.
The Intercept’s response? Greenwald is a “grown person throwing a tantrum.” And it is he, not The Intercept, its editors claim, who has “strayed from his original journalistic roots.”
We quoted Greenwald’s friend and fellow real journalist Matt Taibbi earlier this week. Taibbi marveled, “The least curious people in the country right now appear to be the credentialed news media, a situation normally unique to tinpot authoritarian societies.”
Indeed, as we have written before, the corrupt alliance between the Democrat Party and the Leftmedia is the biggest threat to American Liberty we face today.