New NYPD press officer co-wrote The Intercept Reality Winner story | Hacker News Reader

New NYPD press officer co-wrote The Intercept Reality Winner story

thegrayzone.com

27 pointsexolymph13 comments

Not the first sketchy thing spotted at The Intercept. Read also this excerpt on Glenn Greenwald's spurious reporting of Michael Flynn's prosecution: https://www.emptywheel.net/2020/05/19/glenn-greenwalds-inven...

Old adage about incompetence and maliciousness being indistinguishable applies, but having whistleblowers land in jail MULTIPLE times should raise eyebrows for such a young news organization.

Wondering if The Intercept belongs in the nether world of "news" organizations (read: thinly veiled propaganda outlets) along with InfoWars, RT, etc.

> but having whistleblowers land in jail MULTIPLE times should raise eyebrows for such a young news organization.

Or it shows how difficult security is when trying to stay anonymous when your opposition is a highly motivated spy agency with an incredible amount of power and access. Especially when you worked from them and your trail of evidence is in their highly monitored networks/offices (Winner for example used the office printer to print out classified docs).

Although I'm not defending the practices of these two journalists.

>Wondering if The Intercept belongs in the nether world of "news" organizations (read: thinly veiled propaganda outlets) along with InfoWars, RT, etc.

It's worth noting that the submission is a link to The Gray Zone, which in my view falls squarely into that category. Their founder Max Blumenthal is a frequent contributor to Sputnik and RT. He also attended the same expenses-paid 2015 gala in Russia, celebrating RT's 10-year anniversary, at which Jill Stein and Mike Flynn were photographed sitting with Vladimir Putin. Flynn was later caught lying about taking payments from the Russian government in connection to the event:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/05/flynn-putin-din...

One month after attending this gala, Blumenthal founded The Gray Zone. Its funding sources remain opaque. He also did a 180 from his earlier anti-Assad reporting to become one of the dictator's biggest supporters:

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/bruce-bawer/usef...

He's also published pro-state narratives for other dictators. Here's a 2019 video of Max cheerfully receiving honors from Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who has ruled that country by violence and decree since 2015:

https://twitter.com/NicolasMaduro/status/1156588153945427970

And here's a piece that goes into detail on errors in The Gray Zone's reporting from Latin America:

https://medium.com/muros-invisibles/grayzone-grifters-and-th...

Interesting - thanks for the info! It's a good personal reminder to always vet my sources and keep reporting outlets accountable.

It does make you wonder if this whole time the Intercept has just been a spook front to manage the revelations known to be coming from 'unfriendly' media. This is all confusing and none of it any good.

Even if that isn't the case, the integrity of the Intercept has been called into question and all would-be whistleblowers would be wise to prefer institutions that have a better record of protecting anonymous sources.

Has Greenwald or the Intercept made an official comment on how they helped the federal government go after a whistleblower?

Do you think it's probable that they exposed Reality Winner intentionally?

She exposed herself with bad OPSEC. NSA was going to find her eventually without the tipoff from the Intercept once they published.

Yes I know that's the case in this instance. I was doing further reading and found a couple other informants/whistleblowers were also burned by the Intercept, and the person who owns and founded it (Pierre Omidyar) has said some very suspicious things about how whistleblowers ought to be treated by the press.

This looks like the sort of conspiratorially-minded, innuendo-laden thing that the same author has previously written for The Intercept. The Gray Zone having some sort of spat with The Intercept is maybe an interesting spectator sport for those who are into that sort of thing but I think it's a pretty lousy as an HN topic.

"conspiratorially-minded" is not the same thing as "wrong." can't deny the guy's sketchy career trajectory

It's not but both of these outlets are known for their motivated, advocacy-oriented reporting. A conflict of theirs (presented by one side) is a poor starting point for any kind of interesting discussion.

Is it really that weird for a PR department to hire a journalist whose former beat is relevant to the client?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com