[Peace-discuss] What The Intercept tells us establishment media is for

[J.B. Nicholson]

I wrote:
> Aaron Maté and Glenn Greenwald discuss the "Left media promoting propaganda it once 
> exposed". I highly recommend this and the preceding segment of this interview:
> 
> 
> https://yewtu.be/watch?v=6AXcjwX-JGA (35m 03s) -- "BlueAnon: Glenn Greenwald on why 
> Russiagate disinformation never ends"
> 
> https://yewtu.be/watch?v=FoCDZESfgV4 (19m 23s) -- "Neocon Now!: Glenn Greenwald on 
> Left media promoting propaganda it once exposed"


Glenn Greenwald posted https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1389722584804102148 today:

A screenshot of a fundraising email from membership at emails.theintercept.com which you 
can see at https://twitter.com/pic/media%2FE0lJOE3XoAYJ2Qu.jpg followed by 
Greenwald's response:

> This is repulsive. The Intercept was founded during the Snowden story to defend
> privacy rights & oppose the security state. Now, the liberal DNC hacks who "edit"
> it are boasting they got personal data from Gab users & are sorting through it,
> doing FBI's work to find "extremists."


In https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1389731899883626507 Matt Taibbi followed up to 
Greenwald's post:

> The Intercept ditching its oppositional posture to do an FBI-like job snooping on
> ordinary people in Gab files feels familiar — like Wikileaks being discarded as a
> partner by mainstream outlets in favor of Bellingcat, an approved ™ leak site.


Never forget, that's what the Intercept has been doing (since at least the time they 
asked the NSA, 'Is this leak from you?' revealing Reality Winner as the source and 
playing a crucial role in getting her in prison) and that's what establishment media 
is for.

Like John Kiriakou told us years ago, "Never leak to anyone but WikiLeaks". And even 
that comes with caveats he told Condé Nast in 2017 (quoting 
https://www.wired.com/?p=2171069):

> With the examples set by Kiriakou and Thomas Drake (who went bankrupt defending
> himself), it’s hard to blame people for eyeing their pensions before they blab.
> 
> Even if a leaker takes the plunge anyway, it’s hard to know where to turn. “Few
> traditional media outlets have the budget for investigative journalism, and you
> can’t just take a leaker’s word for it,” Kiriakou says. “A lot of whistleblowers
> and would-be whistleblowers have told me they were ignored by the Washington Post
> or The New York Times and said, well, there’s always WikiLeaks.”
> 
> Not that Kiriakou is any fan of how WikiLeaks handles information. “WikiLeaks
> published my social security number in the Chelsea Manning leak,” he says. “Did
> they need to do that? I think not.” He admits that some of his trepidation towards
> WikiLeaks could be generational—Kiriakou is in his fifties, and still reads his
> news in print—but he ultimately thinks they can become part of the solution only
> when they adopt more vigorous vetting practices.
> 
> But only a small part: “We need a national security whistleblower protection law,”
> Kiriakou says. “There has to be somewhere to go legally in the system, not just
> WikiLeaks.”


And there's more about both Democracy Now and The Intercept from Jimmy Dore & Aaron 
Maté coming soon courtesy of tonight's live Jimmy Dore show.