The founder of a liberal-leaning media outlet is defending a CBS reporter who was attacked for breaking the news of a request from 16 individuals to unmask the identity of then-national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Speaking with Fox News host Martha MacCallum on Friday, the Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald praised reporter Catherine Herridge for her “extremely reliable” reporting on the Russian collusion narrative in spite of attacks from 2020 Democratic candidate Joe Biden’s campaign staff.
“I think Catherine Herridge is a reporter of the highest integrity and professionalism,” Greenwald told MacCallum. “I find it extremely ironic because every time President Trump has insulted or attacked a journalist popular among mainstream media outlets, they proclaim that the republic is coming to an end, that it’s an assault on the free press.”
Greenwald said Herridge is being attacked because she has presented facts that run counter to prevailing narratives in the media about President Trump’s administration.
On Wednesday, Biden’s senior adviser, Andrew Bates, attacked Herridge after the released list of names who had received the Flynn unmasking document included the Democratic front-runner.
“Here, we have the Biden campaign viciously attacking a reporter who is as straight of a shooter as it gets,” Greenwald said. “She doesn’t really ever editorialize, she doesn’t squabble with anybody, she just reports documents that are true.”
Greenwald criticized Herridge’s colleagues in the media who often rush to express “their solidarity as if they’ve been shipped off to the gulag” anytime Trump is critical of them but who are now turning their backs on a reporter who has been seen by many to be fair and accurate over the course of her career.
“For years, there’s been no dissent and no questioning tolerated in the mainstream media when it comes to the Russiagate scandal, the Mueller probe, and she doesn’t play that game,” said Greenwald. “And that’s why they want to punish her.”
Greenwald suspects that Herridge is being targeted because she has released a number of high-profile scoops that discredited the narrative that members of the Trump administration were conspiring with Russia to throw the 2016 presidential election.
“Over the last month, there has been a series of newly released documents that have been in strong tension with the conspiracy theories about Trump and Russia that have prevailed in the media world for three years now,” Greenwald said.
Greenwald said attacks on Herridge’s credibility will be used to scare journalists, who are witnessing massive layoffs across their industry, into not questioning things that could get them fired.
“Imagine if you’re a young journalist and you see jobs disappearing, the last thing you want to do when you look at how they’re treating her, is step forward and question any of these kind of pieties or orthodoxies that the media is peddling,” added Greenwald. “I think it’s really an attempt by the Biden campaign where no one is allowed to be off-note or off-key.”
