Glenn Greenwald: ‘Journalists Are Authoritarians’

https://reason.com/2021/01/23/journalists-are-authoritarians/

by amadeuspagel • 5 years ago

119 48 5 years ago

todipa• 5 years ago

I think he is completely right. Journalism today looks more like advocacy.

Free-speech liberalism are at odds with the political establishment. The liberal camp has been decimated recently with the rise of both the authoritarian right/left.

From my perspective, what is happening in the US right now is somewhat similar to what happened in the Latin American countries in the 60s and 70s.

I'm very happy I discovered https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news It gives me access to articles written about the same subject from both perspectives. What I think it super interesting is how journalists omit certain facts to further their point of view.

tootie5• 5 years ago

Lol at "both perspectives". As if there are only two. And no one raised hackles at alternative perspectives. They were raised at alternative facts.

tootie5• 5 years ago

Facebook and Google and Twitter, and Silicon Valley in general, from the beginning was not to censor. They began to censor because journalists demanded they do so, in part because journalists are authoritarians

There's the headline quotation right there and I gotta say it does not make a lick of sense to me. Journalists didn't drive this at all.

zpeti• 5 years ago

Yes they did. For 4 years they blamed and attacked FB and Twitter for letting trump win. The pressure was enough. Enough for these platforms to disable private messaging of bad Biden news story links. Whether you think it was true or not, it’s insane that these platforms did this 2 weeks before an election.

threatofrain2• 5 years ago

It's notable that the US local news landscape is dominated by the Sinclair media group.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fHfgU8oMSo

tootie5• 5 years ago

That's a blanket statement and Greenwald is still connecting a lot of unconnected dots and then adding a completely subjective assertion on top of it. Obviously there was a ton of reporting on the spread of disinformation, hate speech and even foreign sock puppeting on social media because it was all 100% true.

If you want to blame "journalists" or "the media" then blame Greenwald too because he's one of them. Otherwise you have to acknowledge there was wide range of public and professional opinion. And that social media orgs have all done what they felt they had to do to protect their businesses bottom lines.

Greenwald left The Intercept because his editors had the audacity to ask for edits. That's like living in a Gestapo prison as far as he's concerned. So his absolutely paranoid belief that journalistic authoritarianism is directly to blame for private companies taking action to hide incitement to armed revolution is just far-fetched to me.

snicksnak• 5 years ago

One form of how this works is something along the lines of: activist journalist find something on the platform they don't like, they write about it, go after the advertisers and try to lump them into it like "Look at what disgusting views you're funding with your money, are this the views your company represents?". Advertisers don't like any controversies so they threaten the platforms to pull their money, platforms establish measures to please the advertisers.

Another one is: journalists don't like their outlets getting outperformed by some "whackos/conservatives" on facebook, they go directly after facebook and demand that they downgrade those channels and promote theirs. They demand fact checking routines which are then in part outsourced to outlets that share their values.

spaced-out• 5 years ago

Advertisers don't like any controversies so they threaten the platforms to pull their money, platforms establish measures to please the advertisers.

Advertisers love controversy if they think it will help them sell stuff and don't like it if they think it will alienate their customers, it depends on who the companies cater too.

I think you (and Greenwald) are giving journalists too much credit. They generally write what they think their readers want, advertisers react based on what they think is best for their bottom line.

yunesj• 5 years ago

Are you sure he’s not referring to how journalists are continuously calling for censorship? For example, a headline from the outlet he just left:

Facebook and Twitter Finally Do Slightly More Than Literally Nothing About Trump The temporary deplatforming of Donald Trump is the perfect distillation of Big Tech’s attempt to pantomime principles.

It also sounds like he thinks that illiberal millennials graduated, got jobs as journalists and editors, and now are happy to parrot propaganda from government authorities rather than investigate and report on accounts from whistleblowers.

https://theintercept.com/2021/01/07/trump-capitol-facebook-t...

LatteLazy• 5 years ago

I wouldn't use the word Journalist but... There are 1001 pieces of outrage-porn every day about how someone said a bad thing on some socials media and what will BiGTeCH do about it.

Udik• 5 years ago

I'm pretty sure that Facebook, Twitter etc. have absolutely no will to engage themselves in politics, at least openly. They'd be perfectly happy to focus on technological issues and ways to make more money through advertising. Very reluctantly they had to acknowledge their role in the political debate and start taking decisions, because people were asking them to. And people mostly repeat the opinions and views they've read in the press.

99_00• 5 years ago

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1353728390268940288

motohagiography• 5 years ago

Can you keep a professional job in media if you believe public institutions are corrupted and you bring that standard to your work? You can write, you can be popular on social media, and you can even get the odd freelance gig, but if you align yourself against real power itself, I think he's saying you cannot be an employee, editor, or producer.

I can't see how a serious writer would want to be a journalist now anyway, and Greenwald seems to recognize that there is no "back" to go to. What forward looks like for writers is much more interesting.

sthnblllII• 5 years ago

Correct. A lot of millennials have a warped view of power. Greenwald is very gen-x: skeptical, questioning authority, seeking out the organic and real ("i listen to 'alternative' music, dude"). Millennial culture is heavily trusting, self-righteous and therefore heavily media influenced. Fertile ground for authoritarian regimes and corruption. The right defends the Kushners, the left defends the Bidens, everyone loses.

jagger27• 5 years ago

These HN threads are seriously toxic.

BelenusMordred• 5 years ago

100% on point, they always are. Thankyou for reminding me to not engage.

It's honestly too much despite having a strong opinion on the matter.

Ozzie_osman2• 5 years ago

It's sad that just because Greenwald doesn't toe the line, he's considered fringe and insane. Our Overton window is in a weird spot these days.

happytoexplain• 5 years ago

just because Greenwald doesn't toe the line, he's considered fringe and insane

Is there a reason you're painting his critics as so simple-minded? I've seen a lot of seemingly reasonable criticism of him.

Ozzie_osman2• 5 years ago

Not all his critics. If you disagree with him and can provide substance, that's fine and we can debate it.

But there were a lot of comments in this thread that were literally just saying "Greenwald is losing his mind". No argument, just that.

jelliclesfarm• 5 years ago

It’s getting smaller and tighter. I think it’s on purpose.

zug_zug• 5 years ago

I'm reading this hoping for good points, but I mostly am seeing weak arguments. Also the title is baity.

> The worst thing Trump ever did to any of them was to say mean things about them in tweets. Those aren't assaults on press freedom.

It's hard for me to imagine him not understanding why consistently denouncing the legitimacy of print media in an era of conspiracy theory (especially post pizza-gate) may matter.

> [Facebook and Twitter] had to start censoring…because journalists at CNN and NBC and The New York Times demanded they do so.

I feel like making any of these arguments without mentioning the capitol riots is somewhat a bad-faith narrative.

> [Seems to be arguing that millenials care about free speech less because they are coddled]

I'm not even gonna touch that one.

> They began to censor because journalists demanded they do so, in part because journalists are authoritarians who believe that the modes of information [should be] regulated by them and by others. That's just unfortunately the modern-day mentality of the journalist.

If he hadn't slipped the word authoritarian in there, I think this might be the most interesting point of the piece. I think a lot of people, including journalists, scientific journals, textbooks, wikipedia, even HN believe in rating/filtering information on its quality (is it true?, is it divisive?, does it have an agenda?). In fact, the filtering/amplifying of information is the primary job of such platforms.

As far as I can tell, pre-internet conspiracy-theorists and demagogues never had a guaranteed platform. We tried a great experiment letting anybody say anything with amplification of the masses. Based on the results of the great experiment (Qanon, Trump presidency, "stop the steal", capitol riots) people want to pull back to the tried-and-true pre-web-2.0 journalism (i.e. gatekeepers).

This is where a good-faith exploration would really be interesting.

> [Seems to insinuate that the NYT doesn't believe in whistleblowers like Snowden.]

I hope that's not true.

AnthonyMouse4• 5 years ago

It's hard for me to imagine him not understanding why consistently denouncing the legitimacy of print media in an era of conspiracy theory (especially post pizza-gate) may matter.

What's the alternative? Traditional media gets a pass for everything wrong they do because pizzagate?

I feel like making any of these arguments without mentioning the capitol riots is somewhat a bad-faith narrative.

Not when they've been calling for it since long before the riot. (I'm not sure when it became riots. Was there a second one?)

As far as I can tell, pre-internet conspiracy-theorists and demagogues never had a guaranteed platform.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism

And lest we not forget state-sponsored media.

We tried a great experiment letting anybody say anything with amplification of the masses.

The experiment we tried was a Facebook algorithm designed to increase "engagement" by promoting controversy. That was a Bad Idea.

Maybe time to smash them up instead of appointing them arbiters of the discourse.

disgruntledphd2• 5 years ago

As far as I can tell, pre-internet conspiracy-theorists and demagogues never had a guaranteed platform. We tried a great experiment letting anybody say anything with amplification of the masses. Based on the results of the great experiment (Qanon, Trump presidency, "stop the steal", capitol riots) people want to pull back to the tried-and-true pre-web-2.0 journalism (i.e. gatekeepers).

It's worth noting that the invention of the printing press caused massive social change in Europe, and was not looked upon very kindly at the time by many.

I think the internet analogy writes itself, and I hope that we maintain the ability of humans to converse about what interests them regardless of how crazy they are.

Just remember kids, words are not actions. I can say that I'm gonna burn Y-combinator down (I don't even know where it is, to be honest) but that is not the same as actually burning down their buildings. I worry that we're conflating these two things too much in terms of what we see on the Internet.

And to be fair, the major driver of the craziness of the Republican party is TV and talk radio, not social media.

nicolasp3• 5 years ago

I'm very ambivalent about Greenwald. One the one hand he produced essential work with the Snowden revelations and his exposure of corruption in Brazil. He also makes good points about the moral evil of the Bush/Cheney administrations and Obama's continuation of the war on terror.

But on the other hand it feels like he spends a lot of time attacking strawmen just for the sake of being contrarian. Saying that journalists are authoritarians who want to protect the secrets of the powerful [1] and control access to platforms [2] has a tiny grain of truth in it but is mainly a massive oversimplification that paints a group of thousands of professionals who have a myriad of varying incentives with an incredibly broad brush. He seems to be incapable of nuance in his critique of the journalistic profession, and that renders his message mostly inaudible to me because it feels like it's coming from some form of resentment rather than reasoned arguments.

[1] "Journalists view the dissemination of information about what powerful people are doing in the dark not as their principal function and purpose—which is what it ought to be if we had a healthy media—but as something to be denounced and condemned."

[2] "[Facebook and Google and Twitter, and Silicon Valley in general] began to censor because journalists demanded they do so, in part because journalists are authoritarians who believe that the modes of information [should be] regulated by them and by others.

Shivetya• 5 years ago

It isn't that journalist see social media as a threat but so do the politicians they report on. Prior to the rise of social media, this should not be simply considered Facebook, Twitter, and like, but all the internet as a whole, we relied on the idea that the press, print, radio, and televised, told us the truth.

However the internet showed this was never true. Yes elements of the media did report the truth but they also produced some stories that were outright fabrications or purposefully did not include information that did not support the narrative; three very big stories that fall under this are the GM pickup fires which were assisted in catching fire, that chemical and biological weapons were widespread in Iraq, and of course Dan Rather's fake National Guard document.

Both the media and the political class help each other. One does it to gain favor and the other does it control the message. The internet took the ability to control the message, the narrative, away from the established media and politicians. It put it back into the hands of everyone.

So Greenwald's assertion is true in many ways. A return to where politicians used the media to control the message is a return to a system which allowed the Iraq war to come to fruition. The claim he makes that the press holds the office of the Presidency to different standards based on the party that controls it is easily provable as well. We never saw a level of press persecution before that occurred under Obama yet all of Trump's rambling diatribe was considered worse? On what planet?

Hell this site is guilty of the same as well. We have people here cheering on the FBI, likely the same that screamed when the same agencies trampled on people they liked. This is the society the old media and politicians gave us, putting us at each others throats and taught to revel in it

nicolasp3• 5 years ago

I mostly agree with you. I just want to point out that the reason Trump was held to a different standard than previous presidents is simply that he lied so much from the start. Journalists from "mainstream media" rightly perceived him as a threat because when called out on his lies he overtly attacked them and encouraged violence against them (arguably resulting in casualties in the Capital Gazette shooting).

AnthonyMouse4• 5 years ago

I think it's clear enough that he's talking about specific journalists in specific enumerated publications and not literally all journalists everywhere. He is, after all, one himself.

nicolasp3• 5 years ago

I'm not convinced that's true. He didn't refer to any specific institutions or subsets of journalists in the quotes I included. Even assuming that he meant to, the examples he cites are CNN, NBC, NYT and WaPo. He also accused editors at The Intercept of censoring him over Hunter Biden stories. That's already a very large group of people to generalize.

He clearly views himself and a handful of others as outsiders, in a crusade against a journalistic profession that he views has wholly corrupted by corporate interests.

6gvONxR4sf7o2• 5 years ago

If you read it as a systemic commentary rather than an individual commentary it makes more sense. Journalists as a system might have a behavior that most journalists done engage in. Nobody consciously thinks “let’s be authoritarian” but they create systems and structures that lead that way anyways. The same way any attack of “group X is Y” could be read as a massive oversimplification painting a huge diverse group with a broad brush. The individuals can create and enable a system of Y entirely unconsciously.

And yeah he totally lacks nuance, but at this point I can’t really care. I’m personally sick of unnuanced comments from “our” side benefitting from reading between the lines while near identical comments from Others with an equal lack of nuance get attacked for it. It would be great if we all were nuanced, but that appears impossible so reading things you disagree with charitably is just a necessity now. This comes to mind https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/bad-things

colordrops2• 5 years ago

What bothers me are the hundreds or even thousands of journalists that spout corporate lines, propaganda, and outright lies everyday, and not much is said about them, but with principled journalists like Greenwald, you get these nitpicky judgemental critiques that seem aimed at deriding them.

Yes, Greenwald is not perfect, but he is more objective, honest, and brave than the great majority of journalists out there. It has the flavor of an inorganic smear campaign that has been absorbed repeatedly and unconsciously across social media. It's a common pattern for a post about an anti-establishemt figure to have some positive comments about them, but then some critique inevitably bubbles to the top of thread every time.

drewcoo• 5 years ago

You need more hands! I have one telling me that the problem is not all the journos going along to get along so much as the very few companies in charge of the media. And another telling me that those journos have agency thus culpability. And yet another arm reaching for the popcorn and wondering how long this thread can last.

pmoriarty• 5 years ago

"I'll give you just one example, which is press freedom. Under Obama, as I'm sure you know, the Espionage Act of 1917--one of the most pernicious laws we have on our books; it was enacted under Woodrow Wilson, and it was designed to criminalize dissent from U.S. participation in World War I--was invoked against whistleblowers and sources, like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning and a dozen others, more under Obama than every other prior president combined. It ended up being three times more prosecutions under the Espionage Act for our sources as journalists than all previous presidents, including Nixon or Eisenhower or whoever you want to pick. And the press said almost nothing."

I'd like to know what exactly is so "insane" about pointing this out.

Glenn Greenwald has always been actually on the left, unlike the milk-toast "leftism" (or really "centrism" or rightism) of outlets like the NYT, CNN, MSNBC, etc..

This is what bothers people, and they can't take people actually on the left pointing out what hypocrites and right-wingers many liberals are.

This is why Glenn Greenwald gets censored, but I'm pleased to see that he still has the balls to speak truth to power.

6gvONxR4sf7o2• 5 years ago

What’s worse, the last couple years have developed a full on meme of enlIGhTeNed CEnTrisM as an easy dismissal. You call out any hypocrisy and the knee jerk response is “how could you even begin to think both sides are the same, that’s so idiotic” without really caring that pointing out hypocrisy is not saying everyone’s the same. Reaching the level of meme, you don’t even have to think about what you’re responding to! What’s sadly hilarious is that you see the same meme... on both sides.

There’s a ton I disagree with Greenwood about. But there’s also a lot I agree with. To dismiss him fully because of what I consider his bad ideas would be to also miss out on a lot of good insights.

dragonwriter• 5 years ago

I'd like to know what exactly is so "insane" about pointing this out.

Well, it’s both false on some points and misleading in much of the rest, in service of a false narrative, like much of Greenwald’s monomaniacal campaign to drive a wedge between the Left and the Democratic establishment [0]; the Espionage Act was not passed primarily to criminalize dissent, and the aspects that were arguably intended for that purpose and definitely misused for it have been largely neutralized by subsequent court decisions narrowing their applicability on Constitutional grounds (as, also, have other aspects of the law that address what is more commonly understood as spying), and were not, in any case, the provisions of the law under which prosecutions were carried out under the Obama Administration.

Now, that's not necessarily insane, if, for one example of a scenario in which it would be perfectly rational, Geenwald’s goal is to advance the interests of common opponents of both the Left and the Democratic Establishment

[0] I have no problem with driving a wedge between the Left and the Center-Right Democratic establishment based on the truth, as a Left-leaning pragmatist I recognize that's the only way to get any drive for progress on Left issues. Doing it based on lies and distortion doesn't create pressure for progress, just division and distraction.

jules-jules• 5 years ago

Next time you might want to back up your claims with some actual quotes. Greenwald's assertions about the misuse of the Espionage Act are well documented, cf. causa Assange to just name the latest example, so it would be helpful if you could provide some evidence on why he's wrong.

Also his point about Obama having used the Act more than any other president is simple fact.

microtherion• 5 years ago

Glenn Greenwald has always been actually on the left

Over the last couple of years, he has consistently supported Trump, down to echoing Parler administrators' easily disproven talking points that none of their users were involved in the Capitol riots.

It's entirely consistent with his earlier positions that Greenwald opposed Obama/Clinton-era drone warfare, but from his writings, you'd have a difficult time learning how much drone strikes have expanded under Trump.

And finally, since 2016, Greenwald (as well as Assange and Snowden) have essentially turned into full blown instruments of Putinist propaganda (In Greenwald's case including the denial that Russia engaged in Novichok attacks against critics). This is neither a "leftist" nor an "anti-war" position, he simply favors a different bunch of war mongers.

pohl• 5 years ago

The through line over that whole period, including the present piece, is the pattern of bending over backwards to align with Putin’s messaging goals.

DennisP• 5 years ago

Fwiw, here's TheIntercept's response to his resignation:

https://theintercept.com/2020/10/29/glenn-greenwald-resigns-...

colordrops2• 5 years ago

They didn't address any of the very specific and long form claims that he made in his article about his exit. Seems like long winded ad hominem attack against him.

TedShiller• 5 years ago

After Trump's election, journalists couldn't stop talking about foreign interference. After biden's election, nobody mentioned foreign interference.

tzs• 5 years ago

I'll give you just one example, which is press freedom. Under Obama, as I'm sure you know, the Espionage Act of 1917—one of the most pernicious laws we have on our books; it was enacted under Woodrow Wilson, and it was designed to criminalize dissent from U.S. participation in World War I—was invoked against whistleblowers and sources, like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning and a dozen others, more under Obama than every other prior president combined. It ended up being three times more prosecutions under the Espionage Act for our sources as journalists than all previous presidents, including Nixon or Eisenhower or whoever you want to pick. And the press said almost nothing.

That's fairly meaningless without a comparison of the number of people for whom it could have been applied under Nixon or Eisenhower or whoever.

Was it applied more under Obama than, say, Eisenhower because Obama applied it to cases that Eisenhower would not have applied it to if they had occurred during his administration?

Or were there more people leaking classified information during Obama's time in office than there were during Eisenhower's and that explains why it was applied more under Obama.

nbzso• 5 years ago

I thank our generous corporate saviours for this reality : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RSruvBJdrM ##### https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muxJxNl0IK0

goalieca• 5 years ago

Whether you agree with the government response to covid or not, I think it’s fair to say it was authoritarian. Journalists generally took the position that more rules and restrictions were necessary and often applauded the strongest government responses from other countries. For that reason alone, it would seem there is an authoritarian bend.

Glenn Greenwald: ‘Journalists Are Authoritarians’

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