Are we losing trust in The Intercept?
Greenwald and Poitras both gone…. Not a good look
What it does it say when the co-founders of an organisation both leave within months of each other and both write damning accounts of why they are no longer at the organisation?
I first came across the names of Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras because of their part in the breaking of the Edward Snowden files. Poitras also made the Oscar-winning film Citizenfour about Snowden and the release of the files and Greenwald won a Pulitzer for his reporting on the Snowden story and later released a book-length version of the events and how they related to the burgeoning surveillance culture, called No Place to Hide.
Around the time that the book came out, Poitras, Greenwald, and Jeremy Scahill started publishing on The Intercept, part of First Look Media. This was primarily meant to be a safe space for quality independent journalism. And, by inference, a safe space for whistleblowers.
Given my interest in Snowden and the work of both Poitras and Greenwald up to that point I started reading The Intercept. Not long afterwards, I set up a monthly debit to support the site. I stopped paying at the end of last year after Greenwald left. Greenwald accused The Intercept of censorship of a story involving Joe Biden’s son. The Intercept…