Journalist Glenn Greenwald Resigns At The Intercept Over Biden ‘Censorship’
By Stefan J. Bos, Special Correspondent Worthy News
(Worthy News) – Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald has resigned from U.S. investigative publication The Intercept, citing “censorship” by editors supporting Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
Greenwald said Thursday he left the online outlet after editors refused to publish his story about Joe Biden and son Hunter’s controversial conduct in Ukraine and China.
The American journalist claimed that “The Intercept’s editors, in violation of my contractual right of editorial freedom, censored an article I wrote this week.”
He stressed that they were “refusing to publish it unless I remove all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.”
Greenwald, one of the first journalists to report on the Edward Snowden documents on U.S. mass surveillance, noted broader censorship at the publication he started in 2014 with two other journalists.
TRENDS OF REPRESSION
“The same trends of repression, censorship, and ideological homogeneity plaguing the national press generally have engulfed the media outlet I co-founded, culminating in censorship of my own articles,” he wrote.
The declined article Greenwald published on his website Thursday accuses mainstream media of pro-Biden bias. He referred to their coverage of corruption allegations against the former vice-president’s son in a recent New York Post story.
The Post, America’s fourth-largest newspaper, claimed Hunter Biden was monetizing his father’s access to Ukraine’s improper business dealings.
Social networking site Twitter blocked the article’s spread amid questions over the “origins of the materials” on which it relied.
That included emails apparently sourced from a laptop left by Hunter Biden at a Delaware repair shop last year. Facebook also restricted users’ ability to share the article, saying there were questions over its veracity.
THE INTERCEPT ANGRY
Betsy Reed, The Intercept’s editor-in-chief, condemned Greenwald’s attempt to make himself “appear a victim, rather than a grown person throwing a tantrum.”
“While he accuses us of political bias, it was he who was attempting to recycle a political campaign’ s—the [President Donald] Trump campaign’s—dubious claims and launder them as journalism,” Reed said in a statement. “We have the greatest respect for the journalist Glenn Greenwald used to be,” she sneered.
Greenwald, 53, said resigning from The Intercept wasn’t an easy decision.” 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,” he wrote.
However,” 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,” he said, adding:” 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.”
Greenwald, who also published the bitter email exchanges with editors, said he would continue covering critical investigative stories on his platform with donations.
“I began writing about politics fifteen years ago with the goal of combatting media propaganda and repression. And — regardless of the risks involved — [I] 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,” he explained.
MORE RESIGNATIONS
Greenwald’s resignation follows a shake-up at the New York Times in early June when staffers at the paper openly protested the publication of an op-ed by Republican Senator Tom Cotton.
In that piece, Cotton urged to deploy federal troops to quell riots following the death of George Floyd. The Times subsequently fired opinion editor James Bennet, and opinion writer Bari Weiss announced her resignation from the paper shortly afterward.
That doesn’t surprise Greenwald.” 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,” he noted.” These are the viruses that have contaminated virtually every mainstream center-left political organization, academic institution, and newsroom.”
In a Wednesday appearance on the podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, Greenwald condemned the media’s alleged unwillingness to report on Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
“They’re all desperate for Trump to lose,” Greenwald said, referring to various media outlets. “They don’t want to be scorned in their social circles. And so they’re willing to abdicate their journalistic function, which is reporting on one of the most powerful people in the world, and Joe Biden,” he said.
MEDIA MANIPULATION
The media’s attitudes were” in part because they want to manipulate and tinker with the election using journalism, but a much bigger part because they’re scared of being yelled at on Twitter,” Greenwald added.
The journalist was a” staunch left-winger” who made his name exposing what he viewed as excesses of the Bush-era surveillance state, commented the National Review publication.
“Greenwald more recently earned praise from conservatives for his skeptical coverage of the Russia investigation and his reporting on Brazilian Prime Minister Jair Bolsonaro.”
Greenwald had made clear he wants to reveal all sides of a story in an increasingly partisan media landscape.
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