This part stood out to me, and might be more relevant to the HN crowd:
> But the broader context for the bill is the one most interesting and the one on which I focused in my opening statement and testimony: namely, the relationship between social media and tech giants on the one hand, and the news media industry on the other. Contrary to the popular narrative propagated by news outlets — in which they are cast as the victims of the supremely powerful Silicon Valley giants — that narrative is sometimes (not always, but sometimes) the opposite of reality: much if not most Silicon Valley censorship of political speech emanates from pressure campaigns led by corporate media outlets and their journalists, demanding that more and more of their competitors and ideological adversaries be silenced. Big media, in other words, is coopting the power of Big Tech for their own purposes.
If it matters, I learned about this link/post via /r/stupidpol.
This excerpt makes little sense to me. It says that “sometimes” it’s news media that’s driving SV censorship.
It’s quite pointless having this discussion until there is more evidence as to how large “sometimes” is.
If the corporate media outlets are doing it 1%, social media companies 80% and Random YouTube influencer 15%, then spending time discussing corporate media outlets’ influence seems more than a little pointless.
If it’s up at 70% or the times, then yes, it becomes urgent to discuss this.
The article you linked is almost 6 months old and says absolutely nothing about recent events related to Substack and the calls for censoring certain writers. And where does it call Greenwald's "bullshit"?
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.
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?
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"?
What's the point of championing a position if you're not going to do it towards the opposition? And encourage your cohort to understand what the opposition is thinking? We don't need yet another ineffectual nobody telling people predisposed to hate Carlson that Tucker Bad.
Edit: This submission got me reading some of Greenwald's other recent posts, here's a comment from one:
>Glenn, I am a life-long conservative who recently found you here on Substack after seeing you on TC Tonight a couple of times. Your work is remarkable. In just a short time you have opened my eyes to a lot of new issues and perspectives. [...]
>Turns out, us conservatives have a lot in common now with true liberals, and we are going to have to find ways to work together to deal with [...]
Glenn's thesis in the referenced interview is that conservatives are the true liberals, not the ones who now call themselves liberals. This respondent has been encouraged to find ways to work together with other conservatives and colonize the words "liberal" and "socialist". I'm not sure that encouraging conservatives to find a way to work with real socialists like Tucker and Steve Bannon is the progress that you think it is.
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.
> He quit the company he founded, the intercept, who was indeed censoring.
That is, at the very least, debatable
Greenwald had the liberty at The Intercept to publish his opinion pieces without any editorial interference.
The piece he yelled BLOODY MURDER! about and resigned in a hissy fit was decidedly not an opinion piece, but sourced from The New York Post - The Biden laptop story -, which was so bad, that the original writers at the Post refused to have their bylines printed.
When The Intercept insisted that this apparently factual piece gets editorial treatment (a process applied by every halfway serious press product) he yelled CENSORSHIP! and resigned.
No question that Greenwald did good work in the past. But I, for one, can't take his hysterics, which he now spouts for years, serious any more.
I think everyone turned on him because he spoke the nastiest of truths at the most inconvenient time (week before elections). And lo and behold our political apparatus swiped their power back, and did not allow anyone to question anything. Even a top journalist with years of good work can be smeared in front of the public unquestioningly. And that doesn't mean squat since orange man baaad - exactly what the media ingrained in the masses(yes you included) for the past four years. Nation of free thinkers can't focus for shit.
>decidedly not an opinion piece, but sourced from The New York Post
Sorry if I'm misreading you, but are you suggesting that an opinion piece ceases to be an opinion piece if it references and includes details from news reporting?
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.
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 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”.
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.
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-...
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 hardly read the news anymore since there is so much outrage journalism. The tone of the news has very much changed and the press seems to be at war with everyone. Just in the last year there have been fights with the White House, social media, Substack writers, and probably more than I am forgetting. Are there any good news sources left if I never what to read anything outrage or culture wars?
36 comments
[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 88.4 ms ] thread> But the broader context for the bill is the one most interesting and the one on which I focused in my opening statement and testimony: namely, the relationship between social media and tech giants on the one hand, and the news media industry on the other. Contrary to the popular narrative propagated by news outlets — in which they are cast as the victims of the supremely powerful Silicon Valley giants — that narrative is sometimes (not always, but sometimes) the opposite of reality: much if not most Silicon Valley censorship of political speech emanates from pressure campaigns led by corporate media outlets and their journalists, demanding that more and more of their competitors and ideological adversaries be silenced. Big media, in other words, is coopting the power of Big Tech for their own purposes.
If it matters, I learned about this link/post via /r/stupidpol.
It’s quite pointless having this discussion until there is more evidence as to how large “sometimes” is.
If the corporate media outlets are doing it 1%, social media companies 80% and Random YouTube influencer 15%, then spending time discussing corporate media outlets’ influence seems more than a little pointless.
If it’s up at 70% or the times, then yes, it becomes urgent to discuss this.
https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/glenn-greenwald-quits-inte...
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"?
Edit: This submission got me reading some of Greenwald's other recent posts, here's a comment from one:
>Glenn, I am a life-long conservative who recently found you here on Substack after seeing you on TC Tonight a couple of times. Your work is remarkable. In just a short time you have opened my eyes to a lot of new issues and perspectives. [...]
>Turns out, us conservatives have a lot in common now with true liberals, and we are going to have to find ways to work together to deal with [...]
(Yes, that Bannon, Carlson and Trump are the real socialists is the theory Glen is espousing: see https://www.mediaite.com/politics/glenn-greenwald-describes-...)
That is, at the very least, debatable
Greenwald had the liberty at The Intercept to publish his opinion pieces without any editorial interference.
The piece he yelled BLOODY MURDER! about and resigned in a hissy fit was decidedly not an opinion piece, but sourced from The New York Post - The Biden laptop story -, which was so bad, that the original writers at the Post refused to have their bylines printed.
When The Intercept insisted that this apparently factual piece gets editorial treatment (a process applied by every halfway serious press product) he yelled CENSORSHIP! and resigned.
No question that Greenwald did good work in the past. But I, for one, can't take his hysterics, which he now spouts for years, serious any more.
Sorry if I'm misreading you, but are you suggesting that an opinion piece ceases to be an opinion piece if it references and includes details from news reporting?
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.
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"
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”.
Disagreeing isn’t a good excuse to smear someone.
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?
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.
This is the focus of Matt Taibbi's "Hate Inc."
https://thegrayzone.com/2021/02/20/reuters-bbc-uk-foreign-of...