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11.02.2020 0

‘Media corrupt beyond all recognition.’

By Catherine Mortensen

“Only an educated and informed people will be a free people.”

— John F. Kennedy

In what may prove to be one of the most historically significant moments of the Trump era, a famous progressive journalist resigned from his job at The Intercept news site after being censored for digging into the Joe and Hunter Biden corruption story.

Reporter Glenn Greenwald is a Pulitzer-prize winning reporter who in 2013 while at The Guardian, published a series of reports detailing previously unknown information about American and British global surveillance programs based on classified documents provided by Edward Snowden.  Greenwald later went on to co-foundThe Intercept.

Greenwald announced his resignation on Twitter saying, “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.”

To read the censored article, click here.

To read the emails with The Intercept editors showing the censorship, click here

Greenwald went on to explain his decision:

“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.

“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.”

Greenwald told Tucker Carlson on Fox News that his former editors at The Intercept are “vehemently and enthusiastically support[ing] Joe Biden.”

Tim Pool, another former liberal journalist,  similarly abandoned the main stream media and now hosts a popular podcast, Timcast and weighed in on the controversy in his recent podcast.

“The news media in this country has become corrupt beyond all recognition,” Pool said. “As news media in our country became more and more corruptand biased, the more I resisted. I then left one of these major news conglomerates and started out on my own. To see Glenn Greenwald resign, shows that there are some journalists that still have integrity.

“The American left has gonenuts and the news media is beingdestroyed because of it,” added Pool.

Without a strong and healthy journalistic apparatus in this country we run the risk of extreme corruption taking over.

We need our news media to challenge those who are in power, to afflict the comfortable, and comfort the afflicted. That’s what they’re supposed to do, but so far they have only served to protect the corrupt corporate establishment.

The mainstream media have done so much damage to themselves during the Trump presidency that it is hard to imagine them ever regaining credibility with the American people. The list of fake news stories is too long to catalogue here. We all know what they are, anyway.

Catherine Mortensen is Vice President of Communications.

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