Prominent Journalist Quits Liberal Outlet He Founded Over Suppression of Biden Story
Indicting the liberal media for censorship, journalist Glenn Greenwald has publicly announced his resignation from The Intercept, which he helped found in 2013 with the goal of preventing censorship.
According to an Op-Ed Greenwald wrote on Substack, The Intercept refused to publish Greenwald’s concerns about Biden in light of recent revelations about the alleged activities of Hunter Biden and possible links between the former vice president and his son’s lucrative foreign business operations.
Greenwald bemoaned the fact that “modern media outlets do not air dissent; they quash it,” calling the liberal media outlet’s refusal to run his reporting “censorship.”
“I could not sleep at night knowing that I allowed any institution to censor what I want to say and believe — least of all a media outlet I co-founded with the explicit goal of ensuring this never happens to other journalists, let alone to me, let alone because I have written an article critical of a powerful Democratic politician vehemently supported by the editors in the imminent national election,” he wrote.
Greenwald said that his situation — a liberal being muzzled by liberals — is not unique, and that “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.”
“The same trends of repression, censorship and ideological homogeneity plaguing the national press generally have engulfed the media outlet I co-founded,” he wrote.
Liberalism and journalism, he wrote, are “demanding more and more submission to prevailing orthodoxies imposed by self-anointed monopolists of Truth and Righteousness, backed up by armies of online enforcement mobs.”
As part of his Op-Ed, Greenwald shared a statement of purpose for a new media outlet he hopes to start, which read in part, “American media is gripped in a polarized culture war that is forcing journalism to conform to tribal, groupthink narratives that are often divorced from the truth and cater to perspectives that are not reflective of the broader public but instead a minority of hyper-partisan elites.”
“The censored article, based on recently revealed emails and witness testimony, raised critical questions about Biden’s conduct,” Greenwald wrote.
Greenwald also posted on Substack the piece he was prevented from writing, which noted that the publication of Hunter Biden’s alleged emails “provoked extraordinary efforts by a de facto union of media outlets, Silicon Valley giants and the intelligence community to suppress these stories.”
Greenwald said the revelations “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.”
He added that “in the two weeks since the [New York] 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.”
Greenwald said that instead of getting answers to the questions that are raised, “a national media is all but explicit in their eagerness for Biden to win” created what he deemed “a cone of silence around this story and, to this very day, a protective shield for Biden.”
The result, he wrote, is that Biden never has to answer questions because they will rarely be asked by the media.
However, he said, the sum total of the pieces presented to date implies “serious sleaze by Joe Biden’s son Hunter in trying to peddle his influence with the Vice President for profit.”
“But they also raise real questions about whether Joe Biden knew about and even himself engaged in a form of legalized corruption. Specifically, these newly revealed information suggest Biden was using his power to benefit his son’s business Ukrainian associates, and allowing his name to be traded on while Vice President for his son and brother to pursue business opportunities in China. These are questions which a minimally healthy press would want answered, not buried,” he wrote.
Greenwald noted that anti-Trump mentality is the foundation of this censorship.
“The reality is the U.S. press has been planning for this moment for four years — cooking up justifications for refusing to report on newsworthy material that might help Donald Trump get re-elected. One major factor is the undeniable truth that journalists with national outlets based in New York, Washington and West Coast cities overwhelmingly not just favor Joe Biden but are desperate to see Donald Trump defeated.”
Greenwald offered a moral of the story: “The U.S. media often laments that people have lost faith in its pronouncements, that they are increasingly viewed as untrustworthy and that many people view Fake News sites are more reliable than established news outlets. They are good at complaining about this, but very bad at asking whether any of their own conduct is responsible for it.”
“A media outlet that renounces its core function — pursuing answers to relevant questions about powerful people — is one that deserves to lose the public’s faith and confidence. And that is exactly what the U.S. media, with some exceptions, attempted to do with this story: they took the lead not in investigating these documents but in concocting excuses for why they should be ignored,” he wrote.
However, the Intercept would not publish that, leaving Greenwald to write, “It is astonishing to me, but also a reflection of our current discourse and illiberal media environment, that I have been silenced about Joe Biden by my own media outlet.”
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