The Intercept blasted its co-founder Glenn Greenwald for abandoning his “original journalistic roots” after he announced his resignation from the outlet.
On Thursday, Greenwald, most known for his reporting on documents revealed by Edward Snowden that pertained to U.S. surveillance, said he was resigning from the outlet for censoring his articles. In a statement to the Washington Examiner, the outlet said Greenwald’s allegations of censorship were a “preposterous charge.”
A statement from the outlet said: “Glenn Greenwald’s decision to resign from The Intercept stems from a fundamental disagreement over the role of editors in the production of journalism and the nature of censorship. Glenn demands the absolute right to determine what he will publish. He believes that anyone who disagrees with him is corrupt, and anyone who presumes to edit his words is a censor. Thus the preposterous charge that The Intercept’s editors and reporters, with the lone noble exception of Glenn Greenwald, have betrayed our mission to engage in fearless investigative journalism because we have been seduced by the lure of a Joe Biden presidency. A brief glance at the stories The Intercept has published on Joe Biden will suffice to refute those claims.”
It continued: “The narrative he presents about his departure is teeming with distortions and inaccuracies — all of them designed to make him appear a victim, rather than a grown person throwing a tantrum. It would take too long to point them all out here, but we intend to correct the record in time. For now, it is important to make clear that our goal in editing his work was to ensure that it would be accurate and fair. While he accuses us of political bias, it was he who was attempting to recycle a political campaign’s — the Trump campaign’s — dubious claims and launder them as journalism.”
The Intercept said the outlet has the “greatest respect for the journalist Glenn Greenwald used to be, and we remain proud of much of the work we did with him over the past six years” but that it is “Glenn who has strayed from his original journalistic roots, not the Intercept.”
“The defining feature of The Intercept’s work in recent years has been the investigative journalism that came out of painstaking work by our staffers in Washington D.C., New York, and across the rest of the country. It is the staff of The Intercept that has been carrying out our investigative mission — a mission that has involved a collaborative editing process. We have no doubt that Glenn will go on to launch a new media venture where he will face no collaboration with editors — such is the era of Substack and Patreon. In that context, it makes good business sense for Glenn to position himself as the last true guardian of investigative journalism and to smear his longtime colleagues and friends as partisan hacks. We get it. But facts are facts and The Intercept record of fearless, rigorous, independent journalism speaks for itself,” the statement continues.
In his announcement, Greenwald attached a textual copy of a letter sent to Michael Bloom, the president of First Look Media, noting his intent to resign. In the letter, he blasted the “increasingly authoritarian, fear-driven, repressive editorial team,” which he said publishes nothing that “contradicts their own narrow, homogenous ideological and partisan views: exactly what The Intercept, more than any other goal, was created to prevent.”
“I have asked my lawyer to get in touch with FLM to discuss how best to terminate my contract. Thank you,” Greenwald continued. He also said he plans to do his own journalism on Substack for the foreseeable future.
