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Comment by ajarmst | Hacker News Reader

Greenwald is currently going through what appears to be some sort of public breakdown that features poorly supported claims of conspiracies and vendettas---including multiple reports that he views any editorial process as 'censorship'. He is not, at least at the moment, a reliable source, especially on this topic. This makes me sad, given the good work he has done in the past. I hope he finds his way back.

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Can you be more specific?

He's describing what a lot of us are seeing in the media these days. I closely identify with and agree with what he has written here. It seems like he is one of the few in the industry that actually has some level of self-awareness.

Also, what would he have to do to "find his way back"?

Greenwald isn't wrong here (you and I may disagree about that), but I do agree that his current direction isn't very productive. His current output is too ranty, too editorial, too self-indulgent. Most of his articles could be half the length. If anything, his current writing is evidence that he really does need an editor.

Greenwald has made his point. Now he should buckle down and start producing real journalism. Dig out new facts. Write tight prose. Do good work. Can he do that? You know the saying: "The best revenge is to live well"? Here his strongest evidence of the decay of journalism, and his best revenge, would be to demonstrate superior work. Show them all up.

I fear he's not able to do that. A lone blogger on Substack may not have the resources to do anything but write opinion.

That's a problem with the word "journalist". It can just mean "talking head". We have enough of those. What we need are reporters.

I disagree. I think that CNN, Fox and MSNBC all need an evolution. I think Greenwald tells the truth. You might dislike how intense he yells it, but the content is sound. He is sharp. He isn't slipping. He's just pissed off, and frankly, we all should be.

Say what you will about CNN, MSNBC, and even Fox: their news departments meet editorial standards that Greenwald can’t handle. He chose to ragequit and declared “censorship” instead.

I strongly disagree. Where were these standards during the Covington Highschool kid case? Where were journalistic standards when Governor Cuomo was covering up care home deaths? Where was journalistic standards when the CEO of Sinohawk Holdings was implicating Joe Biden in corruption? CNN's coverage of Bernie Sanders has been plainly obviously biased against him [1].

CNN is not journalism. CNN is a TV show designed to enthrall and manipulate.

Glenn Greenwald has countless times illuminated the deception of the Intelligence Community and how they peddle influence through CNN.

I don't understand how you do not see this. I think you are choosing to see a particular world view because you are perhaps uncomfortable with how chaoticly complicated the world is.

The people that I look to for the truth in complicated times are: Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibi, Chris Hedges and Sam Harris.

I recommend these people to everyone.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/09/world/meanwhile-in-america-ap...

Specifically "Welfare" & "Socialism"

I don’t think CNN is the pinnacle of journalism, I’m saying they meet a minimum bar of standards that Greenwald doesn’t or can’t.

CNN definitely has a bias towards scandal and outrage but so does Greenwald. He has the same incentives as them (clicks) but he does it without fact checkers.

What I recommend to people is a diverse media diet. Different mediums, different incentives, etc. So not Fox News and MSNBC, but newspapers, books about current events, public broadcasting, etc. And best to be skeptical of anyone promising “the truth about X” or “what Y doesn’t want you to know”.

He didn’t work for any of those outlets. He quit the company he founded, the intercept, who was indeed censoring.

I know he didn’t work there, you’re missing my point: editorial control is not censorship. It’s not censorship when my PR fails code review, it means it needs more work. Similarly for journalists, editors exist to hold them to high standards and if those standards aren’t met it’s not censorship, it’s just part of the job.

All newsrooms have safeguards in place to ensure what they publish is credible, and policies for handling mistakes and corrections when stuff slips through the cracks.

The fact that Greenwald threw a tantrum when held to standards that most working journalists are (and should be) held to does not make him a brave truth teller. It means his credibility is suspect.

Pretending for a moment that there was a terrible editor who was conspiring to squash a well-sourced story, a competent and ethical journalist could simply bring the story elsewhere to get published or pass along their findings to another journalist at a different publication. What a charlatan and a hack would do is raise a big stink, cry wolf, and direct their audience to a substack where people can pay money to hear more, free from any pesky fact checkers.

Agreed, I got into reading Greenwald because of his generally sane viewpoints and his good work with the Snowden leaks in the past. Yet he now seems to be going down a rabbit hole I can't follow. I wonder what happened to him?

You know that it was the CIA that invented and spread the term 'conspiracy theorist' to smear those who questioned the official story of the death of President Kennedy, right?

Conspiracy theories are a well-documented psychological and social phenomena that generate self-validating beliefs that are remarkably resilient in the face of contradictory evidence and experience. Or at least that's what the secret cabal of globalists is paying me to tell you.

This has no basis whatsoever, and he is doing no such thing. Feel free to provide any examples of that.

Disagreeing isn’t a good excuse to smear someone.

Here's Glen on the Daily Caller praising Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon as exemplary socialists. The accompanying article covers a lot of the main concerns about Greenwald's behaviour in the last few months. A few minutes on his Twitter feed is also instructive. I wish him well, but I think his loved ones need to intervene.https://www.mediaite.com/politics/glenn-greenwald-describes-...

That's pretty unfair. Anyone who cares should watch the video directly (the title is just clickbait):

https://rumble.com/veaqcf-glenn-greenwald-calls-tucker-carls...

But to your source's credit, it does at least embed the full video.

Maybe that was your game all along? Provoke people into proving you wrong? Get people to watch Greenwald videos?

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