I vaguely understand the paternalistic side of your argument, but if you want to abandon editorial rigour, we have something already built for that. It’s called social media.
If social media doesn’t turn your crank, start your own publication and establish your own editorial fiat. HOWEVER, there’s a problem - if your editing sucks, you won’t attract enough readers to maintain high standards. That’s kind of the shit part of the free market - you can’t just go push a substandard product and scream about “my freedom”.
Ultimately, this draft needed some work and if you go through this thread, you can read some of the Intercept’s own comments. Personally, I found the section about possible disinformation to need more meat. The connection between the Vice President and the company is too tenuous. The article needs to cover WHY experts think it is disinformation, even just to strengthen the claim that it isn’t.
It doesn’t much matter what you want to read, but an editor still had to find balance and appropriate context. Otherwise, publications suck...
> I vaguely understand the paternalistic side of your argument, but if you want to abandon editorial rigour, we have something already built for that. It’s called social media.
Without getting into the irony of the fact that the article we're discussing was blocked on social media, I want to make clear: I don't want to abandon editorial rigor.
But I do think that electioneering concerns should be irrelevant to the context of whether you present information in the public interest. Just as reporting on Trump's tax returns or the Podesta emails were in the public interest, so too are the Hunter Biden emails.
There has not been a historical problem of major publications publishing Russian falsehoods. The "fake news" epidemic is mostly quickly stood up sites propagating on Facebook.
Nor did I see any evidence that Glenn was connected to a Russian disinformation effort. If that were to change (say, if he were found to be receiving payments from the Russian government), then I would support removing him as a writer outright.
> an editor still had to find balance and appropriate context.
Agreed. My claim here is that the editorial staff of The Intercept failed at this goal and their suggestions were not balanced.
I have experience in publishing and have edited some very complicated pieces in my time so I imagine that I look at this situation (and the draft of the Greenwald article) through a different lens.
On the subject of the Hunter Biden emails, there are a lot of problems with reporting on them. The first is that when you look at the full spectrum of Giuliani’s involvement, the laptop genesis story is a little weird. The second is that copies of the hard drive have not been widely disseminated to news rooms.
The laptop genesis story is relevant and the Greenwald article needed to devote more analysis just because of how weird it is. And as for the hard drives, journalists have their own sets of egos and biases.
Both of those points are relevant if you want to question why the media isn’t reporting on them. The laptop genesis story is weird enough to call for fact checking and verification but the hard drives aren’t available. Sadly that makes for weak articles and removes any exclusive coverage motivation to cover the emails.
If social media doesn’t turn your crank, start your own publication and establish your own editorial fiat. HOWEVER, there’s a problem - if your editing sucks, you won’t attract enough readers to maintain high standards. That’s kind of the shit part of the free market - you can’t just go push a substandard product and scream about “my freedom”.
Ultimately, this draft needed some work and if you go through this thread, you can read some of the Intercept’s own comments. Personally, I found the section about possible disinformation to need more meat. The connection between the Vice President and the company is too tenuous. The article needs to cover WHY experts think it is disinformation, even just to strengthen the claim that it isn’t.
It doesn’t much matter what you want to read, but an editor still had to find balance and appropriate context. Otherwise, publications suck...