My Resignation From The Intercept
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.
|
2
hr |
Today I sent my intention to resign from The Intercept, the
news outlet I co-founded in 2013 with Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras, as well
as from its parent company First Look Media.
The final, precipitating cause is
that The Intercept’s editors, in violation of my contractual right of editorial
freedom, censored an article I wrote this week, refusing to publish it unless I
remove all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden,
the candidate vehemently supported by all New-York-based Intercept editors
involved in this effort at suppression.
The censored article, based on
recently revealed emails and witness testimony, raised critical questions about
Biden’s conduct. Not content to simply prevent publication of this article at
the media outlet I co-founded, these Intercept editors also demanded that I
refrain from exercising a separate contractual right to publish this article
with any other publication.
I had no objection to their
disagreement with my views of what this Biden evidence shows: as a last-ditch
attempt to avoid being censored, I encouraged them to air their disagreements
with me by writing their own articles that critique my perspectives and letting
readers decide who is right, the way any confident and healthy media outlet
would. But modern media outlets do not air dissent; they quash it. So
censorship of my article, rather than engagement with it, was the path these
Biden-supporting editors chose.
The censored article will be
published on this page shortly (it is now published here). My letter of intent to resign, which I sent this
morning to First Look Media’s President Michael Bloom, is published below.
As of now, I will be publishing
my journalism here on Substack, where numerous other journalists, including my
good friend, the great intrepid reporter Matt Taibbi, have come in order to
practice journalism free of the increasingly repressive climate that is
engulfing national mainstream media outlets across the country.
This was not an easy choice: I am
voluntarily sacrificing the support of a large institution and guaranteed
salary in exchange for nothing other than a belief that there are enough people
who believe in the virtues of independent journalism and the need for free
discourse who will be willing to support my work by subscribing.
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. 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, 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.
But 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. These are the viruses that have contaminated virtually every
mainstream center-left political organization, academic institution, and
newsroom. I began writing about politics fifteen years ago with the goal of
combatting media propaganda and repression, and — regardless of the risks
involved — 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.
Inscrever-se
From the time I began writing about politics in 2005,
journalistic freedom and editorial independence have been sacrosanct to me.
Fifteen years ago, I created a blog on
the free Blogspot software when I was still working as a lawyer: not with any
hopes or plans of starting a new career as a journalist, but just as a citizen
concerned about what I was seeing with the War on Terror and civil liberties,
and wanting to express what I believed needed to be heard. It was a labor of
love, based in an ethos of cause and conviction, dependent upon a guarantee of
complete editorial freedom.
It thrived because the readership
I built knew that, even when they disagreed with particular views I was
expressing, I was a free and independent voice, unwedded to any faction,
controlled by nobody, endeavoring to be as honest as possible about what I was
seeing, and always curious about the wisdom of seeing things differently. The
title I chose for that blog, “Unclaimed Territory,” reflected that spirit of
liberation from captivity to any fixed political or intellectual dogma or
institutional constraints.
When Salon offered me a job as a
columnist in 2007, and then again when the Guardian did the same in 2012, I
accepted their offers on the condition that I would have the right, except in
narrowly defined situations (such as articles that could create legal liability
for the news outlet), to publish my articles and columns directly to the
internet without censorship, advanced editorial interference, or any other
intervention permitted or approval needed. Both outlets revamped their
publication system to accommodate this condition, and over the many years I
worked with them, they always honored those commitments.
When I left the Guardian at the height of the Snowden reporting in 2013
in order to create a new media outlet, I did not do so, needless to say, in
order to impose upon myself more constraints and restrictions
on my journalistic independence. The exact opposite was true: the intended core
innovation of The Intercept, above all else, was to create a new media outlets
where all talented, responsible journalists would enjoy the same right of
editorial freedom I had always insisted upon for myself. As I told former New
York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller in a 2013 exchange we had in The New York
Times about my
critiques of mainstream journalism and the idea behind The Intercept: “editors
should be there to empower and enable strong, highly factual, aggressive
adversarial journalism, not to serve as roadblocks to neuter or suppress the
journalism.”
When the three of us as
co-founders made the decision early on that we would not attempt to manage the
day-to-day operations of the new outlet, so that we could instead focus on our
journalism, we negotiated the right of approval for senior editors and,
especially the editor-in-chief. The central responsibility of the person
holding that title was to implement, in close consultation with us, the unique
journalistic vision and journalistic values on which we founded this new media
outlet.
Chief among those values was
editorial freedom, the protection of a journalist’s right to speak in an honest
voice, and the airing rather than suppression of dissent from mainstream
orthodoxies and even collegial disagreements with one another. That would be
accomplished, above all else, by ensuring that journalists, once they fulfilled
the first duty of factual accuracy and journalistic ethics, would be not just
permitted but encouraged to express political and ideological views that
deviated from mainstream orthodoxy and those of their own editors; to express
themselves in their own voice of passion and conviction rather stuffed into the
corporatized, contrived tone of artificial objectivity, above-it-all
omnipotence; and to be completely free of anyone else’s dogmatic beliefs or
ideological agenda — including those of the three co-founders.
The current iteration of The Intercept is completely unrecognizable
when compared to that original vision. Rather than offering a venue for airing
dissent, marginalized voices and unheard perspectives, it is rapidly becoming
just another media outlet with mandated ideological and partisan loyalties, a
rigid and narrow range of permitted viewpoints (ranging from establishment
liberalism to soft leftism, but always anchored in ultimate support for the
Democratic Party), a deep fear of offending hegemonic cultural liberalism and
center-left Twitter luminaries, and an overarching need to secure the approval
and admiration of the very mainstream media outlets we created The Intercept to
oppose, critique and subvert.
As a result, it is a rare event
indeed when a radical freelance voice unwelcome in mainstream precincts is
published in The Intercept. Outside reporters or writers with no claim to
mainstream acceptability — exactly the people we set out to amplify — have
almost no chance of being published. It is even rarer for The Intercept to
publish content that would not fit very comfortably in at least a dozen or more
center-left publications of similar size which pre-dated its founding, from
Mother Jones to Vox and even MSNBC.
Courage is required to step out of
line, to question and poke at those pieties most sacred in one’s own milieu,
but fear of alienating the guardians of liberal orthodoxy, especially on
Twitter, is the predominant attribute of The Intercept’s New-York based
editorial leadership team. As a result, The Intercept has all but abandoned its
core mission of challenging and poking at, rather than appeasing and
comforting, the institutions and guardians most powerful in its cultural and
political circles.
Making all of this worse, The
Intercept — while gradually excluding the co-founders from any role in its
editorial mission or direction, and making one choice after the next to which I
vocally objected as a betrayal of our core mission — continued publicly to
trade on my name in order to raise funds for journalism it knew I did not
support. It purposely allowed the perception to fester that I was the person
responsible for its journalistic mistakes in order to ensure that blame for
those mistakes was heaped on me rather than the editors who were consolidating
control and were responsible for them.
The most egregious, but by no
means only, example of exploiting my name to evade responsibility was the
Reality Winner debacle. As The New York Times recently reported, that was a story in which I had no involvement
whatsoever. While based in Brazil, I was never asked to work on the documents
which Winner sent to our New York newsroom with no request that any specific
journalist work on them. I did not even learn of the existence of that document
until very shortly prior to its publication. The person who oversaw, edited and
controlled that story was Betsy Reed, which was how it should be given the magnitude
and complexity of that reporting and her position as editor-in-chief.
It was Intercept editors who
pressured the story’s reporters to quickly send those documents for
authentication to the government — because they was eager to prove to
mainstream media outlets and prominent liberals that The Intercept was willing
to get on board the Russiagate train. They wanted to counter-act the
perception, created by my articles expressing skepticism about the central
claims of that scandal, that The Intercept had stepped out of line on a story
of high importance to U.S. liberalism and even the left. That craving — to
secure the approval of the very mainstream media outlets we set out to
counteract — was the root cause for the speed and recklessness with which that
document from Winner was handled.
But The Intercept, to this very
day, has refused to provide any public accounting of what happened in the
Reality Winner story: to explain who the editors were who made mistakes and why
any of it happened. As the New York Times article makes clear, that refusal
persists to this very day notwithstanding vocal demands from myself, Scahill,
Laura Poitras and others that The Intercept, as an institution that demands
transparency from others, has the obligation to provide it for itself.
The reason for this silence and
this cover-up is obvious: accounting to the public about what happened with the
Reality Winner story would reveal who the actual editors are who are
responsible for that deeply embarrassing newsroom failure, and that would
negate their ability to continue to hide behind me and let the public continue
to assume that I was the person at fault for a reporting process from which I
was completely excluded from the start. That is just one example illustrating
the frustrating dilemma of having a newsroom exploit my name, work and
credibility when it is convenient to do so, while increasingly denying me any
opportunity to influence its journalistic mission and editorial direction, all
while pursuing an editorial mission completely anathema to what I believe.
Despite all of this, I did not want to leave The Intercept. As it
deteriorated and abandoned its original mission, I reasoned to myself — perhaps
rationalized — that as long as The Intercept at least continued to provide me
the resources to personally do the journalism I believe in, and never to
interfere in or impede my editorial freedom, I could swallow everything else.
But the brute censorship this
week of my article — about the Hunter Biden materials and Joe Biden’s conduct
regarding Ukraine and China, as well my critique of the media’s rank-closing
attempt, in a deeply unholy union with Silicon Valley and the “intelligence
community,” to suppress its revelations — eroded the last justification I could
cling to for staying. It meant that not only does this media outlet not provide
the editorial freedom to other journalists, as I had so hopefully
envisioned seven years ago, but now no longer even provides it to me. In the
days heading into a presidential election, I am somehow silenced from
expressing any views that random editors in New York find disagreeable, and now
somehow have to conform my writing and reporting to cater to their partisan
desires and eagerness to elect specific candidates.
To say that such censorship is a
red line for me, a situation I would never accept no matter the cost, is an
understatement. It is astonishing to me, but also a reflection of our current
discourse and illiberal media environment, that I have been silenced about Joe
Biden by my own media outlet.
Numerous other episodes were also
contributing causes to my decision to leave: the Reality Winner cover-up; the
decision to hang Lee Fang out to dry and even force him to
apologize when a colleague tried to destroy his reputation by publicly,
baselessly and repeatedly branding him a racist; its refusal to report on the
daily proceedings of the Assange extradition hearing because the freelance
reporter doing an outstanding job was politically distasteful; its utter lack
of editorial standards when it comes to viewpoints or reporting that flatter the
beliefs of its liberal base (The Intercept published some of the most credulous
and false affirmations of maximalist Russiagate madness, and, horrifyingly,
took the lead in falsely branding the Hunter Biden archive as “Russian
disinformation” by mindlessly and uncritically citing — of all things — a
letter by former CIA officials that contained this baseless insinuation).
I know it sounds banal to say,
but — even with all of these frustrations and failures — I am leaving, and
writing this, with genuine sadness, not fury. That news outlet is something I
and numerous close friends and colleagues poured an enormous amount of our
time, energy, passion and love into building.
The Intercept has done great
work. Its editorial leaders and First Look’s managers steadfastly supported
the difficult and dangerous reporting I did last year with my brave young colleagues
at The Intercept Brasil to expose corruption at the highest levels of the
Bolsonaro government, and stood behind us as we endured threats of death and imprisonment.
It continues to employ some of my
closest friends, outstanding journalists whose work — when it overcomes
editorial resistance — produces nothing but the highest admiration from me:
Jeremy Scahill, Lee Fang, Murtaza Hussain, Naomi Klein, Ryan Grim and others.
And I have no personal animus for anyone there, nor any desire to hurt it as an
institution. Betsy Reed is an exceptionally smart editor and a very good human
being with whom I developed a close and valuable friendship. And Pierre
Omidyar, the original funder and publisher of First Look, always honored his
personal commitment never to interfere in our editorial process even when I was
publishing articles directly at odds with his strongly held views and even when
I was attacking other institutions he was funding. I’m not leaving out of
vengeance or personal conflict but out of conviction and cause.
And none of the critiques I have
voiced about The Intercept are unique to it. To the contrary: these are the
raging battles over free expression and the right of dissent raging within
every major cultural, political and journalistic institution. That’s the crisis
that journalism, and more broadly values of liberalism, faces. Our discourse is
becoming increasingly intolerant of dissenting views, and our culture is
demanding more and more submission to prevailing orthodoxies imposed by
self-anointed monopolists of Truth and Righteousness, backed up by armies of
online enforcement mobs.
And nothing is crippled by that
trend more severely than journalism, which, above all else, requires the
ability of journalists to offend and anger power centers, question or reject
sacred pieties, unearth facts that reflect negatively even on (especially on) the
most beloved and powerful figures, and highlight corruption no matter where it
is found and regardless of who is benefited or injured by its exposure.
Prior to the extraordinary experience of being censored this week by my own
news outlet, I had already been exploring the possibility of creating a new
media outlet. I have spent a couple of months in active discussions with some
of the most interesting, independent and vibrant journalists, writers and
commentators across the political spectrum about the feasibility of securing
financing for a new outlet that would be designed to combat these trends. The
first two paragraphs of our working document reads as follows:
American media is gripped in a
polarized culture war that is forcing journalism to conform to tribal,
groupthink narratives that are often divorced from the truth and cater to
perspectives that are not reflective of the broader public but instead a
minority of hyper-partisan elites. The need to conform to highly restrictive,
artificial cultural narratives and partisan identities has created a repressive
and illiberal environment in which vast swaths of news and reporting either do
not happen or are presented through the most skewed and reality-detached lens.
With nearly all major media
institutions captured to some degree by this dynamic, a deep need exists for
media that is untethered and free to transgress the boundaries of this
polarized culture war and address a demand from a public that is starved for
media that doesn’t play for a side but instead pursues lines of reporting,
thought, and inquiry wherever they lead, without fear of violating cultural
pieties or elite orthodoxies.
I have definitely not
relinquished hope that this ambitious project can be accomplished. And I
theoretically could have stayed at The Intercept until then, guaranteeing a
stable and secure income for my family by swallowing the dictates of my new
censors.
But I would be deeply ashamed if
I did that, and believe I would be betraying my own principles and convictions
that I urge others to follow. So in the meantime, I have decided to follow in
the footsteps of numerous other writers and journalists who have been expelled
from increasingly repressive journalistic precincts for various forms of heresy
and dissent and who have sought refuge here.
I hope to exploit the freedom
this new platform offers not only to continue to publish the independent and
hard-hitting investigative journalism and candid analysis and opinion writing
that my readers have come to expect, but also to develop a podcast, and
continue the YouTube program, “System Update,” I launched earlier this year in
partnership with The Intercept.
To do that, to make this viable,
I will need your support: people who are able to subscribe and sign up for the
newsletter attached to this platform will enable my work to thrive and still be
heard, perhaps even more so than before. I began my journalism career by
depending on my readers’ willingness to support independent journalism which
they believe is necessary to sustain. It is somewhat daunting at this point in
my life, but also very exciting, to return to that model where one answers only
to the public a journalist should be serving.
Inscrever-se
* * * * * * * *
LETTER OF INTENT TO
RESIGN
-------- Forwarded Message
--------
Subject: ResignationDate: Thu, 29
Oct 2020 10:20:54 -0300From: Glenn Greenwald <xxxxxxxx@theintercept.com>To:
Michael Bloom <xxxxxxxxx@firstlook.media>, Betsy Reed
<xxxxxxx@theintercept.com>
Michael -
I am writing to advise you that I
have decided that I will be resigning from First Look Media (FLM) and The
Intercept.
The precipitating (but by no
means only) cause is that The Intercept is attempting to censor my articles in
violation of both my contract and fundamental principles of editorial freedom.
The latest and perhaps most egregious example is an opinion column I wrote this
week which, five days before the presidential election, is critical of Joe
Biden, the candidate who happens to be vigorously supported by all of the
Intercept editors in New York who are imposing the censorship and refusing to
publish the article unless I agree to remove all of the sections critical of
the candidate they want to win. All of that violates the right in my contract
with FLM to publish articles without editorial interference except in very
narrow circumstances that plainly do not apply here.
Worse, The Intercept editors in
New York, not content to censor publication of my article at the Intercept, are
also demanding that I not exercise my separate contractual right with FLM
regarding articles I have written but which FLM does not want to publish
itself. Under my contract, I have the right to publish any articles FLM rejects
with another publication. But Intercept editors in New York are demanding I not
only accept their censorship of my article at The Intercept, but also refrain
from publishing it with any other journalistic outlet, and are using thinly
disguised lawyer-crafted threats to coerce me not to do so (proclaiming it
would be “detrimental” to The Intercept if I published it elsewhere).
I have been extremely
disenchanted and saddened by the editorial direction of The Intercept under its
New York leadership for quite some time. The publication we founded without
those editors back in 2014 now bears absolutely no resemblance to what we set
out to build -- not in content, structure, editorial mission or purpose. I have
grown embarrassed to have my name used as a fund-raising tool to support what
it is doing and for editors to use me as a shield to hide behind to avoid
taking responsibility for their mistakes (including, but not only, with the
Reality Winner debacle, for which I was publicly blamed despite having no role
in it, while the editors who actually were responsible for those mistakes stood
by silently, allowing me to be blamed for their errors and then covering-up any
public accounting of what happened, knowing that such transparency would expose
their own culpability).
But all this time, as things
worsened, I reasoned that as long as The Intercept remained a place where my
own right of journalistic independence was not being infringed, I could live
with all of its other flaws. But now, not even that minimal but foundational
right is being honored for my own journalism, suppressed by an increasingly
authoritarian, fear-driven, repressive editorial team in New York bent on imposing
their own ideological and partisan preferences on all writers while ensuring
that nothing is published at The Intercept that contradicts their own narrow,
homogenous ideological and partisan views: exactly what The
Intercept, more than any other goal, was created to prevent.
I have asked my lawyer to get in
touch with FLM to discuss how best to terminate my contract. Thank
you -
Glenn
Greenwald
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.