At this point I think it’s safe to say that a majority of the profession of “journalism” is fully against the idea of free speech.
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.
There are two possibilities for why “journalists” have turned against free speech so hard:
- Because “journalists” are so thoroughly brainwashed and delusional they believe Trump is a mortal threat to mankind and stopping him requires full-blown censorship of any and all information that could potentially sink Joe Biden’s campaign.
- Or, they know that Trump is not actually a threat to all mankind, but instead a threat to the entrenched ruling elite that these “journalists” have now become propagandists for, so they merely pretend their censorship is to Save Mankind From Trump.
In other words, either they’re dumb, or evil.
Take your pick.
Glenn Greenwald has been one of the few leftists to actually maintain his honesty and dedication to the truth during the Trump-era. Other notables include Tim Pool, Matt Taibbi and Michael Tracey.
They have not become conservatives, but merely remain dedicated to what liberalism used to stand for: anti-war, free speech, individual liberties and anti-establishment. The problem for them is that the modern left and the Democratic Party have completely abandoned all that stuff.
Their hatred of Trump overrides every prior concern they once had, there is no price they are not willing to pay to “Stop Trump,” even if it means killing free speech within the media.
Greenwald will soon publish his article on Joe Biden, he says. I look forward to it and will probably comment on it here when I get a chance to review it.
Finally, ask yourself this: would “journalists” be this desperate to stop all the stories about the Bidens’ corruption if they were confident in Biden’s chances to win the election?