QResear.ch

#11347969 at 2020-10-29 21:33:56 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #14493: Normies Gonna Learn To Spoiler Hunter Edition

My Resignation From The Intercept

The same trends of repression, censorship and ideological homogeneity plaguing the national press generally have engulfed the media outlet I co-founded, culminating in censorship of my own articles.

Today I sent my intention to resign from The Intercept, the news outlet I co-founded in 2013 with Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras, as well as from its parent company First Look Media.

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.

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, these Intercept editors also demanded that I refrain from exercising a separate contractual right to publish this article with any other publication.

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. So censorship of my article, rather than engagement with it, was the path these Biden-supporting editors chose.

The censored article will be published on this page shortly (it is now published here). My letter of intent to resign, which I sent this morning to First Look Media's President Michael Bloom, is published below.

As of now, I will be publishing my journalism here on Substack, where numerous other journalists, including my good friend, the great intrepid reporter Matt Taibbi, have come in order to practice journalism free of the increasingly repressive climate that is engulfing national mainstream media outlets across the country.

This was not an easy choice: I am voluntarily sacrificing the support of a large institution and guaranteed salary in exchange for nothing other than a belief that there are enough people who believe in the virtues of independent journalism and the need for free discourse who will be willing to support my work by subscribing.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/my-resignation-from-the-intercept

#11345345 at 2020-10-29 18:11:34 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #14490: Take The House Edition

>>11345212
>https://twitter.com/EmeraldRobinson/status/1321874294218104833

@ggreenwald
"But the pathologies, illiberalism, and repressive mentality that led to the bizarre spectacle of my being censored by my own media outlet are ones that are not unique to The Intercept."I'll be doing my journalism at Substack for now. Subscribe here:" https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1321869908154765312

My Resignation From The Intercept
The same trends of repression, censorship and ideological homogeneity plaguing the national press generally have engulfed the media outlet I co-founded, culminating in censorship of my own articles.

Today I sent my intention to resign from The Intercept, the news outlet I co-founded in 2013 with Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras, as well as from its parent company First Look Media.

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.

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, these Intercept editors also demanded that I refrain from exercising a separate contractual right to publish this article with any other publication.

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. So censorship of my article, rather than engagement with it, was the path these Biden-supporting editors chose.

The censored article will be published on this page shortly. My letter of intent to resign, which I sent this morning to First Look Media's President Michael Bloom, is published below.

As of now, I will be publishing my journalism here on Substack, where numerous other journalists, including my good friend, the great intrepid reporter Matt Taibbi, have come in order to practice journalism free of the increasingly repressive climate that is engulfing national mainstream media outlets across the country.

continued…
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/my-resignation-from-the-intercept

#9909931 at 2020-07-09 23:22:22 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #12682: [I] 9 Comms: Edition

TikTok Turns to Dem Lobbyists to Fight Potential Trump Ban

Former Clyburn, Pelosi staffers will spearhead Chinese app's D.C. operations

Former aides to powerful Democrats are flocking to TikTok's lobbying team as the Trump administration weighs a possible ban of the China-linked app that some policymakers consider a threat to national security.

TikTok-as well as its Chinese parent company, ByteDance-has rapidly expanded its influence operations in the last year, spending $270,000 on lobbying, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The app bolstered its operations in July, hiring Michael Hacker, former senior adviser to House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D., S.C.), to lead its public policy team. Michael Bloom, a former senior adviser to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), and former Democratic Senate aide Kim Lipsky will also join TikTok, according to CNBC, which first reported the expansion.

The short-video sharing app has cemented its place as the go-to social media app for hip, young Zoomers. Some national security experts, however, worry that China's national security law might compel the app's Chinese parent company to share user data with the regime. TikTok denies that it will comply with such a request from Beijing, but the company has already demonstrated its willingness to accommodate Beijing's political interests. The Washington Post reported in September that the social media giant's American moderators censored discussions about the Hong Kong protests and other sensitive topics out of deference to its Chinese counterparts.

In response to mounting criticism, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday that he is "looking at" banning TikTok from the United States. India already banned TikTok, along with 58 other Chinese apps, largely in retaliation for a deadly clash between Indian and Chinese security forces in contested border territories in the Himalayas.

The app's first major tussle with U.S. authorities came in February 2019, when the U.S. government fined TikTok $5.7 million for illegally collecting the data of users under the age of 13. Since then, members of Congress and government officials have expressed increasing alarm about the app. In October, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) penned a bipartisan letter asking U.S. intelligence officials to evaluate whether the app constitutes a "national security risk."

In response to the scrutiny, TikTok hired lobbyists to mollify concerned legislators and preempt restrictions on its operations. As the coronavirus pandemic forced a nationwide reckoning about America's relationship with China, some lawmakers have demanded restrictions on the company's operations. Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.), for example, introduced a law prohibiting federal employees from using the app on government devices in March.

https://freebeacon.com/national-security/tiktok-turns-to-dem-lobbyists-to-fight-potential-trump-ban/

#5716011 at 2019-03-16 05:09:29 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #7310: Full Moon Coming Edition

notable

https://archive.ph/sSDLO

'OTHER PRIORITIES'
The Intercept Shuts Down Access to Snowden Trove
First Look Media, the company that owns the Intercept, also announced that it was laying off several of the researchers who had been charged with maintaining the documents.
Maxwell Tani
03.13.19 11:02 PM ET

First Look Media announced Wednesday that it was shutting down access to whistleblower Edward Snowden's massive trove of leaked National Security Agency documents.
Over the past several years, The Intercept, which is owned by First Look Media, has maintained a research team to handle the large number of documents provided by Snowden to Intercept journalists Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald.
But in an email to staff Wednesday evening, First Look CEO Michael Bloom said that as other major news outlets had "ceased reporting on it years ago," The Intercept had decided to "focus on other editorial priorities" after expending five years combing through the archive.
"The Intercept is proud of its reporting on the Snowden archive, and we are thankful to Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald for making it available to us," Bloom wrote.
He added: "It is our hope that Glenn and Laura are able to find a new partner-such as an academic institution or research facility-that will continue to report on and publish the documents in the archive consistent with the public interest."
First Look Media's decision to shut down the archives puts an end to the company's original vision of using The Intercept as a means to report on the NSA documents. In its original mission statement, Poitras, Greenwald, and Jeremy Scahill wrote that the initial mission of the site was, in the short-term, to "provide a platform and an editorial structure in which to aggressively report on the disclosures provided to us by our source, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden."
Wednesday's decision-coupled with an announcement that First Look would lay off 4 percent of its staff-was not received well by many Intercept staffers, including Poitras.
In a series of internal memos, Poitras admonished First Look Media for its decision to shut down its archives, and lay off several researchers who had maintained them.
In a note to the First Look board of directors obtained by The Daily Beast, Poitras called on the board to review the decision to eliminate the archives, and criticized the company's decision to keep her in the dark about their plans until this week.
"This decision and the way it was handled would be a disservice to our source, the risks we've all taken, and most importantly, to the public for whom Edward Snowden blew the whistle," she wrote.
In a separate memo to Bloom that was sent to many of the company's staffers, Poitras wrote that she was "sickened" by the decision to eliminate the research team and "shut down" the Snowden archive.
"Your email's attempt to paper over these firings is not appropriate when the company is presented with such devastating news," she said.
Late Thursday evening, Greenwald tweeted that both he and Poitras had full copies of the archives, and had been searching for a partner to continue research.

Over the past several years, The Intercept has published several major stories based on information in the archives, which include millions of files, many of which include sensitive internal U.S. national-security secrets and trade practices. Other major media companies also have access to large portions of the archive, which yielded Pulitzer Prize-winning scoops for The Guardian and The Washington Post.
In a 2016 post, Greenwald laid out the site's vision for how best to report on materials in the archive.
"From the time we began reporting on the archive provided to us in Hong Kong by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, we sought to fulfill his two principal requests for how the materials should be handled: that they be released in conjunction with careful reporting that puts the documents in context and makes them digestible to the public, and that the welfare and reputations of innocent people be safeguarded," Greenwald wrote in a 2016 post.
"As time has gone on, The Intercept has sought out new ways to get documents from the archive into the hands of the public, consistent with the public interest as originally conceived."

#5695795 at 2019-03-15 06:48:01 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #7284: The Comfy Lag Edition

The Intercept Bars Co-Founder From Meeting After Snowden Archive Shutdown

The meeting featured written questions to permit frank talk without reprisal, a remarkable development for a company built on aggressive journalism and defense of free speech.

Laura Poitras, one of the founding editors of The Intercept, was barred from attending a company meeting on Thursday following a decision by First Look Media to discontinue managing The Intercept's archive of leaked documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Poitras was the initial recipient of Snowden's trove of secret NSA documents and a driving journalistic force behind the bombshell stories they yielded beginning in 2013. Since 2014, Poitras and Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald have entrusted The Intercept, which is owned by First Look Media, to maintain the voluminous archive. The trove of information includes millions of files that have been the basis for major stories worldwide concerning the growth and reach of 21st-century mass digital surveillance. Multiple sources told The Daily Beast on Thursday that Poitras was invited by staff to a meeting following the company's announcement that it was cutting four percent of staff and ending its maintenance of the archive. But according to two sources, David Bralow, the company's general counsel, blocked Poitras, who co-founded the site but now works for a different arm of First Look Media, from attending.

Part of the agenda for the meeting was to permit staff to query management about the staff cuts. The mood was said to be tense, featuring written questions to permit a frank discussion. A First Look spokesperson did not respond to The Daily Beast's request for comment. In a series of notes shared among staff on Wednesday evening and obtained by The Daily Beast, Poitras criticized First Look Media CEO Michael Bloom for the decision to lay off research staff and discontinue management of the archive, and called on the board of directors to reconsider the decision. "This decision and the way it was handled would be a disservice to our source, the risks we've all taken, and most importantly, to the public for whom Edward Snowden blew the whistle," she wrote in an email shared with staff.

Bloom responded in a company-wide memo on Wednesday evening, saying that while company leadership had decided to "focus on other editorial priorities" after combing through the archives for five years. "The Intercept is proud of its reporting on the Snowden archive, and we are thankful to Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald for making it available to us," Bloom wrote.He added: "It is our hope that Glenn and Laura are able to find a new partner-such as an academic institution or research facility-that will continue to report on and publish the documents in the archive consistent with the public interest.

Greenwald pointed out in a statement on Thursday that other media outlets with access to the files had ceased reporting on the archive, and acknowledged that The Intercept's financial constraints were the primary reason that the company was halting its reporting on the archive. He also said he is working to secure a new permanent home for the archives. "I have spent the last several months seeking to ensure that publication of these materials continues under the auspices of experts most competent to do this work, and who work with institutions that have the ample funds required to do so robustly, quickly, and responsibly," Greenwald wrote.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/laura-poitras-co-founder-of-the-intercept-barred-from-company-meeting-after-snowden-archive-shutdown?source=email&via=desktop

#5687637 at 2019-03-14 23:06:56 (UTC+1)
Q Research General #7274: THE UNITED STATES is with YOU Edition

The Intercept shuts Snowden archive amid layoffs & outrage

First Look Media, the parent company of the Intercept, announced it will shut access to the archive of documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to cut costs as it plans to layoff 4 percent of staff.
The news was met with outrage from high ranking staff member and filmmaker Laura Poitras, who went to Hong Kong to meet Snowden in 2013, just before the first revelations from his trove of National Security Agency documents were published.  

She said she was "sickened" by the decision to "eliminate the research team, which has been the beating heart of the newsroom since First Look Media was founded," and slammed the company for making the decision without consulting her or other board members.
Poitras, Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill joined First Look Media at its founding, launching the Intercept in 2014 as a place to"aggressively report" on the Snowden documents. The company employed a research team to work on the huge trove of documents provided by Snowden.

Five years later, it appears that First Look Media owner and Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar no longer wish to hold the trove of documents. CEO Michael Bloom sent an email to staff on Wednesday saying as other media outlets had "ceased reporting on it years ago," it was going to "focus on other editorial priorities," the Daily Beast reports.


https://www.rt.com/news/453842-snowden-archive-shut-intercept/