The great civil liberties writer and icon Glenn Greenwald has split with several “news” institutions (e.g., Salon and later The Guardian) to escape censorship by those institutions. Greenwald is a First Amendment absolutist, a devout liberal (in the 1960s sense), and a former civil rights attorney who has broken many major news stories, including the Edward Snowden story and many revelations regarding Julian Assange and Wikileaks.
Greenwald’s books, columns and speeches have inspired millions.
In 2013 Greenwald founded The Intercept along with Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras, in order to have an outlet for his writings that did not censor his writings.
But over time, the editors of The Intercept began to adopt the same controlling traits as Greenwald’s previous employers. And recently the Intercept’s editors censored an article Greenwald wrote, demanding that Greenwald “remove all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.”
“The censored article, based on recently revealed emails and witness testimony, raised critical questions about Biden’s conduct.”
“These are the viruses that have contaminated virtually every mainstream center-left political organization, academic institution, and newsroom,” writes Greenwald.
“Rather than offering a venue for airing dissent, marginalized voices and unheard perspectives, it is rapidly becoming just another media outlet with mandated ideological and partisan loyalties, a rigid and narrow range of permitted viewpoints (ranging from establishment liberalism to soft leftism, but always anchored in ultimate support for the Democratic Party), a deep fear of offending hegemonic cultural liberalism and center-left Twitter luminaries, and an overarching need to secure the approval and admiration of the very mainstream media outlets we created The Intercept to oppose, critique and subvert.
