Glenn Greenwald leaves The Intercept due to Censorship of Biden Scandals

Glenn Greenwald is a Pulitzer prize-winning progressive journalist who was the co-founder of The Intercept until just recently when he exited the publication accusing the editors of suppressing his article which asked critical questions of Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden.

Greenwald posted an article to his own personal website laying out the details of his issues and departure from The Intercept.

Greenwald said:

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.

And: 

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…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.

The editors at The Intercept claimed the Hunter Biden laptop scandal was misinformation by the Trump campaign, despite nobody from the Joe Biden campaign having disputed the authenticity of the information and the FBI confirming the computer is not part of a Russian disinformation campaign. 

The Intercept put out a statement regarding Greenwald that read, “While he accuses us of political bias, it was he who was attempting to recycle the dubious claims of a political campaign — the Trump campaign — and launder them as journalism.” 

The article The Intercept refused to publish is now hosted off of Greenwald’s own website, linked here. 

Some may jump to conclusions about Greenwald and assume that because he disagreed with The Intercept’s editorial team over his critical questions about Biden that Greenwald must in some ways be mildly Conservative, but that is not at all who he is. 

Greenwald has worked at several more liberal news publications like Salon, and The Guardian, as well as having a well earned reputation for being a progressive, and  anti-US military journalist. 

Greenwald while at The Guardian even published leaked documents from Edward Snowden and is an open supporter of Julian Assange, the founder of the pro-Russian news-leak publisher WikiLeaks.

This episode is the most recent and poignant example of bias and censorship in the media getting to such an extreme point that even someone on the same side of the political aisle as the censors can no longer stand the lack of journalistic integrity coming from his own organization. 

Greenwald closed his long takedown of media censorship by stating:

But all this time, as things worsened, I reasoned that as long as The Intercept remained a place where my own right of journalistic independence was not being infringed, I could live with all of its other flaws. But now, not even that minimal but foundational right is being honored for my own journalism, suppressed by an increasingly authoritarian, fear-driven, repressive editorial team in New York bent on imposing their own ideological and partisan preferences on all writers…

Greenwald leaving The Intercept the way he did confirms for many that mainstream media companies are not just unconsciously biased but actively trying to craft the media narrative by ignoring facts they do not like.

It is likely that such a high profile departure from a news organization like Greenwald will cause changes in the way journalism is done in at least part of the industry.