Editorial
Media and Censorship
The sudden exit of the well-known investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald from the Intercept, a media outlet he co-founded raises several important questions. Greenwald, who came to the light with his critically acclaimed and award-winning books like ‘How Would a Patriot Act?’, ’No Place to Hide,’ ‘Great American Hypocrites,’ ‘With Liberty and Justice for Some’ & ‘The Digital Surveillance State’ etc.
Glenn Greenwald, Investigative Journalist, Author
While working for ‘The Guardian,’ Glenn Greenwald played a crucial role in getting the interview of Edward Snowden from Hong Kong while Snowden was escaping from the US. It is very interesting to know even the Pulitzer-winning reporter of his caliber faced the ‘censorship’ and that too from his co-founders. In his openly published resignation letter, Glenn Greenwald stated that “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.” In the detailed open resignation letter, Glenn Greenwald wrote “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.”
What this clearly indicates is the necessity of blockchain-based, censorship-resistant free media, where the authors not only take the credit and money but also ownership. Precisely for this noble thought alone, we have to support the media like ‘Slog.’
By
Editor-in-Chief
INSTANEWSGRAM