Zweifelsverdrängung als Tugend: wie der Kulturkrieg die Medien zerreißt

Der Mitgründer und Autor des Internet-Magazins The Intercept Glenn Greenwald teilte am Donnerstag seinen Ausstieg aus dem Medium mit*, weil ihm von den Herausgebern wenige Tage vor der Präsidentschaftswahl die Veröffentlichung seines kritischen Artikels über den demokratischen Präsidentschaftskandidaten Joe Biden verweigert worden war.

Dadurch, dass sie seinen Text verhinderten, so Greenwald, hätten die Herausgeber von The Intercept seine vertraglichen Rechte als Mitgründer und Autor verletzt. Außerdem sei ihm sogar untersagt worden, seinen Text anderswo zu veröffentlichen. In seinem offenen Brief an die Intercept-Führung schreibt er weiter, er habe sich einverstanden erklärt, kritische Passagen aus seinem Text zu streichen, und die anderen Autoren aufgefordert, die mit seinem Artikel zu Biden nicht einverstanden seien, einen Contra-Text zu schreiben, um seine Argumente zu zerpflücken. Auch darauf seien seine Kollegen nicht eingegangen. Ihm bleibe unter diesen Bedingungen nur der Abschied.

Der Fall Greenwald fügt sich in die lange Reihe von Eingriffen und Kündigungen in amerikanischen Medien (und nicht nur dort), in denen offenbar eine Redaktion nach der anderen Journalismus nicht mehr als einen Platz der Verständigung sieht, an dem sich verschiedene Meinungen und Nachrichten finden, sondern als Graben im großen Kampf zwischen Richtig und Falsch, Gut und Böse. The Intercept, eine Mitte-Links-Plattform, zählt zu den wichtigen politischen Onlinemedien in den USA, etliche Geschichten des Mediums wurden preisgekrönt. Das eigene Motto des Magazins lautet: „Furchtloser, kontroverser Journalismus, der den Mächtigen auf die Finger schaut“ („Fearless, adversarial journalism that holds the powerful accountable“).

Die Reaktion des Mediums auf den Abschied seines Mitgründers und seine Vorwürfe fiel erstaunlich polemisch und allgemein aus. Die Chefredaktion schrieb, Greenwalds Vorwürfe seien gespickt mit „Verdrehungen und Ungenauigkeiten“, es würde aber zu lange dauern, sich gleich damit zu befassen. Das werde man aber nachholen („It would take too long to point them all out here, but we intend to correct the record in time“.) Gleichzeitig wirft die Intercept-Führung Greenwald eine Pro-Trump-Haltung vor:

„Während er uns politische Voreingenommenheit vorwirft, ist er derjenige, der versucht hatte, die Behauptungen einer politischen Kampagne – der Trump-Kampagne – als Journalismus weißzuwaschen“ („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“).

Im Streit über das von der New York Post veröffentlichte Material, das auf die mögliche Vermischung von Joe Bidens Amtsführung als Vizepräsident und die Geschäfte seines Sohnes Hunter Biden in der Ukraine und China hinweist, geht es in vielen Redaktionen nicht mehr darum, wie über das offenbar von einem alten Laptop Hunter Bidens stammende Material berichtet werden soll – sondern, ob überhaupt. Erst am 14. Oktober hatte Twitter verhindert, dass der Link eines Artikels der New York Post über das Hunter-Biden-Material innerhalb des Kurznachrichtendienstes veröffentlicht werden konnte. Twitter-Nutzern war es noch nicht einmal möglich, den Link untereinander in einer privaten Mitteilung zu verschicken. Damit hatte sich Twitter endgültig von seinem alten Charakter als Austauschplattform verabschiedet und war zum Medium geworden – allerdings eines mit dem Quasi-Monopol auf dem Markt der Kurznachrichten-Kanäle.

Twitter-Chef Jack Dorsey bezeichnete die Zensur des NYP-Artikels zwar als Fehler. Allerdings beendete das nicht die Kontroverse in den Medien, was über den Komplex Hunter und Joe Biden berichtet werden sollte, sondern fachte sie noch an.
In den vergangenen Monaten gab es in der US-Medienlandschaft heftige Kontroversen darüber, was Journalismus sein sollte. Im Juni verließ der damalige Verantwortliche für die Meinungsseite der New York Times James Bennet auf redaktionsinternen Druck das Blatt: Er hatte einen Gastkommentar des republikanischen Senators Tom Cotton ins Blatt gehoben, der forderte, gegen Plünderer und Gewalttäter am Rand der Black Lives Matter-Demonstrationen auch das Militär einzusetzen. Viele NYT-Redaktionsmitglieder hielten es für einen unentschuldbaren Fehler, Cotton überhaupt Raum für seine Ansichten eingeräumt zu haben. Der Beitrag ist auch heute noch auf der NYT-Seite abrufbar, allerdings mit einer Art Entschuldigung und der Feststellung versehen, er entspreche nicht den Standards der Zeitung.

Kurz nach Bennet verließ die Redakteurin Bari Weiss das Blatt, in dem sie sich mit ihren liberal-konservativen Ansichten von der Redaktionsmehrheit immer stärker gemobbt und in die Enge getrieben sah. „Ein neuer Konsens zeigt sich in der Presse und vielleicht ganz besonders in diesem Blatt“, schrieb Weiss in ihrer Abschiedserklärung, „dass die Wahrheit nicht mehr ein Prozess der kollektiven Entdeckung ist, sondern eine Orthodoxie, in die einige wenige Erleuchtete schon eingeweiht sind, die es als Aufgabe betrachten, alle anderen darüber zu informieren“ („A new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.“)
Die Teilung in die Erleuchteten und den Rest findet nicht nur in den USA statt, sondern sehr ähnlich auch in Deutschland.

In seinem Buch „Wie ich meine Zeitung verlor“ beschreibt der mehrfach mit Preisen ausgezeichnete Reporter Birk Meinhardt, wie er sich von der Redaktion der Süddeutschen Zeitung immer weiter entfremdete und die Redaktion von ihm, bis er schließlich kündigte. Mehrere Reportagen Meinhardts waren nicht gedruckt worden. In einem Text sezierte er zwei Kriminalfälle, in denen Rechtsextreme lange zu Unrecht verdächtigt worden waren, auch deshalb, weil bei Justiz und öffentlich Einflussreichen eine „Zweifelsverdrängung“ stattgefunden hatte. Der zuständige Redakteur, so Meinhardt, habe ihm damals mitgeteilt, an seinem Text sei zwar faktisch nichts falsch. Aber er könnte den Falschen nützen.

Andere Journalisten kamen in letzter Zeit für Beiträge unter Druck, die nicht der Blattlinie entsprachen, entschieden sich aber, zu bleiben. Etwa die Zeit-Redakteurin Mariam Lau, die sich in einem Pro-und-Contra-Format gegen die Praxis der privaten Seenotrettung auf dem Mittelmeer ausgesprochen hatte. Gegen sie hatten linke Medienmitarbeiter und andere im Meinungsgeschäft eine Hasskampagne bis hin zu Gewaltdrohungen inszeniert; ein Twitterer überlegte laut, wie es wäre, Lau heißen Kaffee ins Gesicht zu schütten. Die Zeit-Chefredaktion, die das Pro und Contra vorher abgesegnet hatte, stellte sich danach nicht hinter die Redakteurin, sondern zeigte sich öffentlich zerknirscht, dass der Beitrag erschienen war. Einer ähnlichen internen Kampagne sah sich Silke Hasselmann ausgesetzt, die sich im Deutschlandfunk gegen die Aufnahme von Migranten aus dem niedergebrannten griechischen Lager Moria nach Deutschland ausgesprochen hatte: „Brandstifter gehören nicht auch noch belohnt“.

Statt einfach eine begründete Gegenmeinung zu veröffentlichen, „distanzierten“ sich Kollegen von Hasselmann.
Das NDR-Medienmagazin ZAPP führte ein Interview mit dem Historiker Jürgen Zimmerer, in dem er zwar das Deutschlandradio und die Kommentatorin nicht namentlich erwähnte, aber so gegen die Journalistin wütete, dass jeder in der Branche verstand, wer gemeint war. In einer maßlosen Tirade behauptete Zimmerer, im öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunk finde gerade eine „Diskursverschiebung nach rechts“ statt; der Kommentar zu Moria sei „unmenschlich“. Der Historiker zog sogar wirre Verbindungen zu den Morden von Hanau.

Als vorerst letzter in der langen Reihe erlebte Helmut Mauró, Musikkritiker der Süddeutschen Zeitung eine Art öffentliche Exekution durch die Redaktionsleitung. Maurós Vergehen bestand darin, einen spöttischen Artikel über den Pianisten Igor Levit zu schreiben, der sich nicht nur mit dessen Klavierspiel befasst, sondern auch mit seinen exzessiv ausgestoßenen politischen Verlautbarungen auf Twitter. In einer Talkshow hatte Levit erklärt, AfD-Anhänger hätten „ihr Menschsein verwirkt“, er operierte also mit der Kategorie des Untermenschen. Mauró fragte auch vor diesem Hintergrund, wofür Levit eigentlich sein Bundesverdienstkreuz bekommen habe. Anfangs verteidigte die Chefredaktion den Text noch als legitimen Meinungsbeitrag. Dann knickte sie schließlich vor dem tobenden Twittermob ein, entschuldigte sich für Maurós Artikel, warf sich in den Staub und den Kollegen gewissermaßen der gerechten Meute zum Fraß vor.

Sehr viele Empörungstwitterer inklusive der SPD-Chefin Saskia Esken waren mit dem Feldzug zugunsten Levits und gegen den Autor der Süddeutschen augenscheinlich so beschäftigt, dass sie nicht oder nur sehr spät dazu kamen, sich zu der Enthauptung Samuel Patys durch einen tschetschenischen Muslim zu äußern.
„Twitter ist der ultimative Chefredakteur“, schrieb Bari Weiss in ihrem Brief zum Abschied.

In ihren Umständen und Details unterscheiden sich die Fälle von Greenwald, Bennet, Weiss, Meinhardt, Lau, Hasselmann und Mauró, aber sie laufen in einem Punkt zusammen: In vielen Medien auf der linken Seite des Spektrums dürften einzelne Redakteure und Autoren es sich mittlerweile dreimal oder mehr überlegen, etwas gegen die Blattlinie zu veröffentlichen. Und es im Zweifelsfall lassen. Dass die Chefredaktion einen Text für vertretbar hält, gilt möglicherweise nur vierundzwanzig Stunden. Und selbst der Status eines Mitgründers nützte Greenwald bei The Intercept nichts.

Ein neues Ideal etabliert sich in den Redaktionen und nicht nur dort: das Ideal der Reinheit. Es zeigt eine bemerkenswerte Wahlverwandtschaft zum politischen Islam.
„Die Pathologien, der Illiberalismus und die repressive Mentalität, die zu dem bizarren Schauspiel meiner Zensierung in meinem eigenen Medium geführt hat, sind keinesfalls einmalig für The Intercept“, schreibt Greenwald. „Das sind die Viren, die buchstäblich jede politische Organisation im Bereich Mainstream-Mitte-Links, jede akademische Institution und jede Nachrichtenplattform befallen haben.“

( „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 by no means unique to The Intercept. These are the viruses that have contaminated virtually every mainstream center-left political organization, academic institution, and newsroom“).

*Publico dokumentiert Greenwalds Abschiedserklärung von The Intercept hier:

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, and the emails with Intercept editors showing the censorship are 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.
Like anyone with young children, a family and numerous obligations, I do this with some trepidation, but also with the conviction that there is no other choice. I could not sleep at night knowing that I allowed any institution to censor what I want to say and believe — least of all a media outlet I co-founded with the explicit goal of ensuring this never happens to other journalists, let alone to me, let alone because I have written an article critical of a powerful Democratic politician vehemently supported by the editors in the imminent national election.
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 by no means unique to The Intercept. These are the viruses that have contaminated virtually every mainstream center-left political organization, academic institution, and newsroom. I began writing about politics fifteen years ago with the goal of combatting media propaganda and repression, and — regardless of the risks involved — simply cannot accept any situation, no matter how secure or lucrative, that forces me to submit my journalism and right of free expression to its suffocating constraints and dogmatic dictates.

From the time I began writing about politics in 2005, journalistic freedom and editorial independence have been sacrosanct to me. Fifteen years ago, I created a blog on the free Blogspot software when I was still working as a lawyer: not with any hopes or plans of starting a new career as a journalist, but just as a citizen concerned about what I was seeing with the War on Terror and civil liberties, and wanting to express what I believed needed to be heard. It was a labor of love, based in an ethos of cause and conviction, dependent upon a guarantee of complete editorial freedom.
It thrived because the readership I built knew that, even when they disagreed with particular views I was expressing, I was a free and independent voice, unwedded to any faction, controlled by nobody, endeavoring to be as honest as possible about what I was seeing, and always curious about the wisdom of seeing things differently. The title I chose for that blog, “Unclaimed Territory,” reflected that spirit of liberation from captivity to any fixed political or intellectual dogma or institutional constraints.
When Salon offered me a job as a columnist in 2007, and then again when the Guardian did the same in 2012, I accepted their offers on the condition that I would have the right, except in narrowly defined situations (such as articles that could create legal liability for the news outlet), to publish my articles and columns directly to the internet without censorship, advanced editorial interference, or any other intervention permitted or approval needed. Both outlets revamped their publication system to accommodate this condition, and over the many years I worked with them, they always honored those commitments.
When I left the Guardian at the height of the Snowden reporting in 2013 in order to create a new media outlet, I did not do so, needless to say, in order to impose upon myself more constraints and restrictions on my journalistic independence. The exact opposite was true: the intended core innovation of The Intercept, above all else, was to create a new media outlets where all talented, responsible journalists would enjoy the same right of editorial freedom I had always insisted upon for myself. As I told former New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller in a 2013 exchange we had in The New York Times about my critiques of mainstream journalism and the idea behind The Intercept: “editors should be there to empower and enable strong, highly factual, aggressive adversarial journalism, not to serve as roadblocks to neuter or suppress the journalism.”
When the three of us as co-founders made the decision early on that we would not attempt to manage the day-to-day operations of the new outlet, so that we could instead focus on our journalism, we negotiated the right of approval for senior editors and, especially the editor-in-chief. The central responsibility of the person holding that title was to implement, in close consultation with us, the unique journalistic vision and journalistic values on which we founded this new media outlet.
Chief among those values was editorial freedom, the protection of a journalist’s right to speak in an honest voice, and the airing rather than suppression of dissent from mainstream orthodoxies and even collegial disagreements with one another. That would be accomplished, above all else, by ensuring that journalists, once they fulfilled the first duty of factual accuracy and journalistic ethics, would be not just permitted but encouraged to express political and ideological views that deviated from mainstream orthodoxy and those of their own editors; to express themselves in their own voice of passion and conviction rather stuffed into the corporatized, contrived tone of artificial objectivity, above-it-all omnipotence; and to be completely free of anyone else’s dogmatic beliefs or ideological agenda — including those of the three co-founders.

The current iteration of The Intercept is completely unrecognizable when compared to that original vision. Rather than offering a venue for airing dissent, marginalized voices and unheard perspectives, it is rapidly becoming just another media outlet with mandated ideological and partisan loyalties, a rigid and narrow range of permitted viewpoints (ranging from establishment liberalism to soft leftism, but always anchored in ultimate support for the Democratic Party), a deep fear of offending hegemonic cultural liberalism and center-left Twitter luminaries, and an overarching need to secure the approval and admiration of the very mainstream media outlets we created The Intercept to oppose, critique and subvert.
As a result, it is a rare event indeed when a radical freelance voice unwelcome in mainstream precincts is published in The Intercept. Outside reporters or writers with no claim to mainstream acceptability — exactly the people we set out to amplify — have almost no chance of being published. It is even rarer for The Intercept to publish content that would not fit very comfortably in at least a dozen or more center-left publications of similar size which pre-dated its founding, from Mother Jones to Vox and even MSNBC.
Courage is required to step out of line, to question and poke at those pieties most sacred in one’s own milieu, but fear of alienating the guardians of liberal orthodoxy, especially on Twitter, is the predominant attribute of The Intercept’s New-York based editorial leadership team. As a result, The Intercept has all but abandoned its core mission of challenging and poking at, rather than appeasing and comforting, the institutions and guardians most powerful in its cultural and political circles.
Making all of this worse, The Intercept — while gradually excluding the co-founders from any role in its editorial mission or direction, and making one choice after the next to which I vocally objected as a betrayal of our core mission — continued publicly to trade on my name in order to raise funds for journalism it knew I did not support. It purposely allowed the perception to fester that I was the person responsible for its journalistic mistakes in order to ensure that blame for those mistakes was heaped on me rather than the editors who were consolidating control and were responsible for them.
The most egregious, but by no means only, example of exploiting my name to evade responsibility was the Reality Winner debacle. As The New York Times recently reported, that was a story in which I had no involvement whatsoever. While based in Brazil, I was never asked to work on the documents which Winner sent to our New York newsroom with no request that any specific journalist work on them. I did not even learn of the existence of that document until very shortly prior to its publication. The person who oversaw, edited and controlled that story was Betsy Reed, which was how it should be given the magnitude and complexity of that reporting and her position as editor-in-chief.
It was Intercept editors who pressured the story’s reporters to quickly send those documents for authentication to the government — because they was eager to prove to mainstream media outlets and prominent liberals that The Intercept was willing to get on board the Russiagate train. They wanted to counter-act the perception, created by my articles expressing skepticism about the central claims of that scandal, that The Intercept had stepped out of line on a story of high importance to U.S. liberalism and even the left. That craving — to secure the approval of the very mainstream media outlets we set out to counteract — was the root cause for the speed and recklessness with which that document from Winner was handled.
But The Intercept, to this very day, has refused to provide any public accounting of what happened in the Reality Winner story: to explain who the editors were who made mistakes and why any of it happened. As the New York Times article makes clear, that refusal persists to this very day notwithstanding vocal demands from myself, Scahill, Laura Poitras and others that The Intercept, as an institution that demands transparency from others, has the obligation to provide it for itself.
The reason for this silence and this cover-up is obvious: accounting to the public about what happened with the Reality Winner story would reveal who the actual editors are who are responsible for that deeply embarrassing newsroom failure, and that would negate their ability to continue to hide behind me and let the public continue to assume that I was the person at fault for a reporting process from which I was completely excluded from the start. That is just one example illustrating the frustrating dilemma of having a newsroom exploit my name, work and credibility when it is convenient to do so, while increasingly denying me any opportunity to influence its journalistic mission and editorial direction, all while pursuing an editorial mission completely anathema to what I believe.

Despite all of this, I did not want to leave The Intercept. As it deteriorated and abandoned its original mission, I reasoned to myself — perhaps rationalized — that as long as The Intercept at least continued to provide me the resources to personally do the journalism I believe in, and never to interfere in or impede my editorial freedom, I could swallow everything else.
But the brute censorship this week of my article — about the Hunter Biden materials and Joe Biden’s conduct regarding Ukraine and China, as well my critique of the media’s rank-closing attempt, in a deeply unholy union with Silicon Valley and the “intelligence community,” to suppress its revelations — eroded the last justification I could cling to for staying. It meant that not only does this media outlet not provide the editorial freedom to other journalists, as I had so hopefully envisioned seven years ago, but now no longer even provides it to me. In the days heading into a presidential election, I am somehow silenced from expressing any views that random editors in New York find disagreeable, and now somehow have to conform my writing and reporting to cater to their partisan desires and eagerness to elect specific candidates.
To say that such censorship is a red line for me, a situation I would never accept no matter the cost, is an understatement. It is astonishing to me, but also a reflection of our current discourse and illiberal media environment, that I have been silenced about Joe Biden by my own media outlet.
Numerous other episodes were also contributing causes to my decision to leave: the Reality Winner cover-up; the decision to hang Lee Fang out to dry and even force him to apologize when a colleague tried to destroy his reputation by publicly, baselessly and repeatedly branding him a racist; its refusal to report on the daily proceedings of the Assange extradition hearing because the freelance reporter doing an outstanding job was politically distasteful; its utter lack of editorial standards when it comes to viewpoints or reporting that flatter the beliefs of its liberal base (The Intercept published some of the most credulous and false affirmations of maximalist Russiagate madness, and, horrifyingly, took the lead in falsely branding the Hunter Biden archive as “Russian disinformation” by mindlessly and uncritically citing — of all things — a letter by former CIA officials that contained this baseless insinuation).
I know it sounds banal to say, but — even with all of these frustrations and failures — I am leaving, and writing this, with genuine sadness, not fury. That news outlet is something I and numerous close friends and colleagues poured an enormous amount of our time, energy, passion and love into building.
The Intercept has done great work. Its editorial leaders and First Look’s managers steadfastly supported the difficult and dangerous reporting I did last year with my brave young colleagues at The Intercept Brasil to expose corruption at the highest levels of the Bolsonaro government, and stood behind us as we endured threats of death and imprisonment.
It continues to employ some of my closest friends, outstanding journalists whose work — when it overcomes editorial resistance — produces nothing but the highest admiration from me: Jeremy Scahill, Lee Fang, Murtaza Hussain, Naomi Klein, Ryan Grim and others. And I have no personal animus for anyone there, nor any desire to hurt it as an institution. Betsy Reed is an exceptionally smart editor and a very good human being with whom I developed a close and valuable friendship. And Pierre Omidyar, the original funder and publisher of First Look, always honored his personal commitment never to interfere in our editorial process even when I was publishing articles directly at odds with his strongly held views and even when I was attacking other institutions he was funding. I’m not leaving out of vengeance or personal conflict but out of conviction and cause.
And none of the critiques I have voiced about The Intercept are unique to it. To the contrary: these are the raging battles over free expression and the right of dissent raging within every major cultural, political and journalistic institution. That’s the crisis that journalism, and more broadly values of liberalism, faces. Our discourse is becoming increasingly intolerant of dissenting views, and our culture is demanding more and more submission to prevailing orthodoxies imposed by self-anointed monopolists of Truth and Righteousness, backed up by armies of online enforcement mobs.
And nothing is crippled by that trend more severely than journalism, which, above all else, requires the ability of journalists to offend and anger power centers, question or reject sacred pieties, unearth facts that reflect negatively even on (especially on) the most beloved and powerful figures, and highlight corruption no matter where it is found and regardless of who is benefited or injured by its exposure.

Prior to the extraordinary experience of being censored this week by my own news outlet, I had already been exploring the possibility of creating a new media outlet. I have spent a couple of months in active discussions with some of the most interesting, independent and vibrant journalists, writers and commentators across the political spectrum about the feasibility of securing financing for a new outlet that would be designed to combat these trends. The first two paragraphs of our working document reads as follows:
American media is gripped in a polarized culture war that is forcing journalism to conform to tribal, groupthink narratives that are often divorced from the truth and cater to perspectives that are not reflective of the broader public but instead a minority of hyper-partisan elites. The need to conform to highly restrictive, artificial cultural narratives and partisan identities has created a repressive and illiberal environment in which vast swaths of news and reporting either do not happen or are presented through the most skewed and reality-detached lens.
With nearly all major media institutions captured to some degree by this dynamic, a deep need exists for media that is untethered and free to transgress the boundaries of this polarized culture war and address a demand from a public that is starved for media that doesn’t play for a side but instead pursues lines of reporting, thought, and inquiry wherever they lead, without fear of violating cultural pieties or elite orthodoxies.
I have definitely not relinquished hope that this ambitious project can be accomplished. And I theoretically could have stayed at The Intercept until then, guaranteeing a stable and secure income for my family by swallowing the dictates of my new censors.
But I would be deeply ashamed if I did that, and believe I would be betraying my own principles and convictions that I urge others to follow. So in the meantime, I have decided to follow in the footsteps of numerous other writers and journalists who have been expelled from increasingly repressive journalistic precincts for various forms of heresy and dissent and who have sought refuge here.
I hope to exploit the freedom this new platform offers not only to continue to publish the independent and hard-hitting investigative journalism and candid analysis and opinion writing that my readers have come to expect, but also to develop a podcast, and continue the YouTube program, “System Update,” I launched earlier this year in partnership with The Intercept.
To do that, to make this viable, I will need your support: people who are able to subscribe and sign up for the newsletter attached to this platform will enable my work to thrive and still be heard, perhaps even more so than before. I began my journalism career by depending on my readers’ willingness to support independent journalism which they believe is necessary to sustain. It is somewhat daunting at this point in my life, but also very exciting, to return to that model where one answers only to the public a journalist should be serving.“

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