Shortly after resigning from The Intercept on Thursday, Glenn Greenwald published the article whose censoring he said caused him to step down in the first place.
Greenwald announced on Thursday that he would be leaving The Intercept, the publication that he co-founded in 2014, due to censorship from editorial staff over a piece critical of Joe and Hunter Biden.
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.https://t.co/dZrlYGfEBf
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 29, 2020
“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,” Greenwald wrote in a piece explaining his resignation. “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.”
Later on Thursday, Greenwald published the censored piece on Substack, an online platform writers can use to send email newsletters.
“This draft obviously would have gone through one more round of proof-reading and editing by me — to shorten it, fix typos, etc — but it’s important for the integrity of the claims to publish the draft in unchanged form that Intercept editors last saw, and announced that they would not ‘edit’ but completely gut as a condition to publication,” Greenwald wrote in the preamble to his piece.
The piece slammed modern media, saying that journalists are doing a disservice by looking to protect favored candidates, rather than seek truth.
“All of these new materials, the authenticity of which has never been disputed by Hunter Biden or the Biden campaign, raise important questions about whether the former Vice President and current front-running presidential candidate was aware of efforts by his son to peddle influence with the Vice President for profit, and also whether the Vice President ever took actions in his official capacity with the intention, at least in part, of benefitting his son’s business associates,” Greenwald wrote. “But in the two weeks since the Post published its initial story, a union of the nation’s most powerful entities, including its news media, have taken extraordinary steps to obscure and bury these questions rather than try to provide answers to them.”
He goes on to lay out evidence for why the media should be deeply questioning the Biden campaign’s failure to respond to allegations about the former vice president’s son. He also goes after the media for offering “excuses” for evidence presented against the Biden family, including saying, without evidence, that it is part of a Russian disinformation campaign.
In a piece about his resignation, Greenwald also alluded to a new media company, saying that he has grown increasingly disappointed in media’s inability to speak against corruption, regardless of politics.
“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,” Greenwald wrote. “…I have definitely not relinquished hope that this ambitious project can be accomplished.”
Read Greenwald’s resignation letter and censored article here and here.
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Jordyn Pair is a reporter with The Ohio Star. Follow her on Twitter at @JordynPair.
Photo “Glenn Greenwald” by Robert O’Neill. CC BY-SA 4.0.
