I'm gonna go with Greenwald's version of events on this one. This person seems fully compromised.
"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.
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.
Way to weasel out of that question.
"Glenn was censored from publishing in his own publication!"
"No he wasn't he tweeted it later."
That's a non-answer.
Edit: >"Glenn was censored from publishing in his own publication!"
This is neither a question or a quote from what I said.
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".
Why two standards for two different leaders?
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/emails-with-intercept-edito...
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.
As an example, I've read many "clear, straightforward, and polite" illegal eviction letters sent by landlords in the past few months.
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.
That's downright nasty and unprofessional.
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".
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.
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
> I have to add that your comments about The Intercept and your colleagues are offensive and unacceptable.
That's putting it gently.
Greenwald made his name with quality investigative journalism. It sounds like he has fallen from this standard by trying to run a story with dubious political talking points and pass it off as factual news. We have a term for people like this: tabloid writers or opinion commentators. This is a sad decline to see.
He's free to do whatever he likes in his own name -- and it sounds like this is the path he has chosen.
Why did you not believe the first side you heard but you believed the second? Or is your conclusion making sense of both?
Why didn't I believe Greenwald initially? Well, I have had the dubious pleasure of seeing many people behave badly and then play the morally-outraged victim to try to legitimize it. There's a particular way they write and talk, and Greenwald's description of events reeked of it.
The Intercept's response made a few jabs but it didn't level any particular wild accusations, unlike Greenwald. It seemed much more credible, although clearly frustrated. I assume (reading between the lines) there he developed a prior history of conflicts and bad blood at the Intercept, and political differences. This kind of blow-up does not just come from nowhere.
Greenwald has since released the emails, and they sound much closer to what the Intercept said than what he did: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/emails-with-intercept-edito...
The editors clearly had substantive journalistic concerns about the extent Greenwald was drawing conclusions from dubious evidence, and the lack of context around it. They're comfortable publishing the parts of the story he can substantiate, but not the parts that are weaker (or less on-topic). There have some political disagreements, but that's hardly censorship.