Glenn Greenwald: The Intercept Won’t Have Editorial ‘Obstacles’ For Its Reporting

Don’t ever refer to Glenn Greenwald as “blogger Glenn Greenwald.” Whenever some poor bastard in the traditional press describes him as such, he strenuously objects in classic Greenwaldian fashion, usually involving the word “drooling” and 5,000 others, give or take. He’s a journalist, dammit, not a blogger. And don’t you forget it, mister. In fact, in his most recent post for The Intercept, Greenwald bends over backwards to make sure everyone knows he’s a Journalist Doing Journalism. Also, journalist. Did I mention journalism?

But the way he described The Intercept‘s view of journalism in a new profile published in The Guardian, he inadvertently makes it sound like it’s just another blog — with, of course, a really juicy goody bag of source material courtesy of Edward Snowden.

I’ll come back to that presently. But first, I’d like to underscore that my gripe with Greenwald, contra-Charlie Pierce, has nothing to do with what I think of him personally. Frankly, in the one or two non-political chats I’ve had with Greenwald over Twitter and email, he’s seemed nice enough. That notwithstanding, I think Greenwald is a terrible journalist/blogger — whatever you choose to call him — and I believe he’s seriously misled and misinformed thousands if not millions of readers via his too-clever redefinition of what he considers to be “doing journalism.” Clearly, many of the people who have read Greenwald over the past year have been unaware of his other agenda beyond attacking the National Security Agency and its counterparts.

Since the advent of the written word, people have generally believed what they read, and so it goes with Greenwald’s reporting. Couple that with misleading headlines, buried ledes and hyperbolic leaps of logic, Greenwald has achieved mostly what he set out to do: hook the general public into believing that NSA is in our electronic devices watching our every move and collecting our every thought. Even though it’s, you know, not doing that.

But to me and to a handful of others, this story is much more than about what NSA is up to. Greenwald and his colleagues at The Intercept, The Guardian and even NBC News are zealously abandoning the basic and quite important rules of journalism, mainly because operating according to those rules would dampen the dramatic impact of their reporting.

In The Guardian yesterday, Greenwald announced that there won’t be any editors approving or rejecting articles for The Intercept:

“We want to avoid this hierarchical, top-down structure where editors are bosses and obstacles to being published,” Greenwald explains. “We are trying to make it much more collaborative. Our journalists have a variety of tools to make their writing better and one of them is the editor. We also want journalists to help to hire editors.”

Only Greenwald would demonize the notion of critical editors… [READ MORE]

By: Bob Cesca

Bob Cesca is the managing editor at The Daily Banter (www.thedailybanter.com) and a Huffington Post contributor since 2005. He's worked in journalism since 1988 as a print writer/editor, a radio news anchor, a digital media columnist/editor, a book author and blogger. He's the co-host of the Bubble Genius Bob & Chez Show podcast and a Thursday regular on the syndicated Stephanie Miller Show. He's appeared on numerous other radio shows including the John Phillips Show and Geraldo Rivera Show in Los Angeles. Bob has been a commentator/analyst on the BBC (TV and radio), MSNBC, Current TV, CNN and Sky News. Following him on Twitter: @bobcesca_go