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Comment by SyzygistSix | Hacker News Reader

What on earth happened to Matt Tiabbi and Glenn Greenwald? Does a certain amount of exposure to news and conspiracy break people at a certain point? I occasionally worry that they didn't change but that I did.

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Greenwald stuck to his guns as he always did when his audience decided that they'd rather embrace the overbearing/surveillance state as long as the court jester didn't win the election again, that's how I see it at least. I'd like to give a less flippant answer but I honestly can't see any difference in his views now and back then, both in US coverage and Brazil's coverage.

I agree he’s stayed the same, but what was revealed was not some deeply held value system beyond contrarianism for contrarianism and attention’s sake. There was a fascistic attempt to overthrow the government, and the best I can surmise is that Greenwald took the side of the overthrowers because any other journalist with eyes and even the slightest care for truth could see what happened. So he chose to take the path that could let him feel like a smart guy going against the crowd. He’s a hipster journalist unconcerned with the truth.

Keep in mind, this is a guy who has been thrown out of not one but two news organizations, one of which he founded! The level of narcissism and self-obsession that takes must be astounding.

could you give me an example of him "taking the side" of trump? all I remember is him trying to not be fast and loose with the facts to beat the dead horse the entire media was already doing, themselves unconcerned with the truth and more concerned with their soapbox to repeat what the previous 20 journalists already said. Unless bringing up pretty valid skepticism is now being a hipster journalist.

What was the second outlet he was ousted from? I know of the intercept sure, and he was ousted because he wanted to cover the biden laptop, they kept claiming he couldn't(not only in the intercept itself but anywhere else) because it wasn't really true and now...well we all know how that turned out.

Calling him a hipster journalist unconcerned with the truth is just a flat out lie, especially if you conveniently ignore all his ongoing work in brazil. He was one of the main reasons the current president is not in jail and defeated bolsonaro in the elections, something which bolsonaro attempted to prosecute him for, and now with lula in power he an extreme critic of the censorship the supreme court is using to silence people, the same people that absolutely hate him for getting lula out and ousting bolsonaro.

He is an example of being steadfast in his beliefs against censorship and surveillance state, just because the vast majority of journalists are actually reporters parroting whatever party line the newsroom toes at the time doesn't mean someone who actually sticks to his ideals is a hipster.

Yup, it's pretty amazing how a large number of Greenwald's followers immediately jumped ship when Glenn started to hold their side to the same standards.

"Glenn has gone off the rails" is pretty funny to read honestly.

Nothing has changed except who Glenn is talking about about. Apparently as a "good progressive journalist" you're never supposed to turn the spotlight on your own side?

I think it’s a combination of never having been as good as we might’ve liked (Taibbi’s stories from when he was working for The eXile suggest where this came from) and valuing being contrary to the establishment more than being right (Matt Yglesias is another good example of that). That can give them a big hit when the establishment is wrong (Iraq, whether bankers should be punished in 2008) but it sets them up for failure when it’s not (Trump), and since they have made their careers on that it’s extra hard to reconsider since that means acknowledging that their defining instinct led them astray.

At what point did Wikileaks become the bad guys?

Was this a change in their behavior, or a change in American political attitudes towards the role of journalism?

I’ll engage rather than downvoting. Something always struck me as odd about Assange, and while we can debate whether conspiring with the Russians in hack and leak operations against the US is a departure from their prior behavior, I think it’s unfair to pretend Americans suddenly had a huge value shift in not being okay with that.

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