The Intercept Whines about Lack of Donations Blaming Trump, After Censoring Founder Glenn Greenwald
Shane Trejo
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A fundraising appeal from The Intercept contains complaints that donations have dried up in recent months, blaming former President Donald Trump’s attacks on the fake news for their blog’s lack of viability in the marketplace.
“Since Donald Trump left office on January 20, donations to The Intercept have gone down sharply,” the fundraising appeal states. “After years of steady growth, last month brought fewer new members than we’ve seen in more than two years.”
They note that progressive publications throughout the world are hurting without having Trump in the White House allowing them to publish absurd nonsense to their captive audiences.
“While Trump railed against journalists as ‘the enemy of the people,’ grassroots outrage over Trump’s corruption, racism, and incompetence fueled a spike in ratings,” the fundraising letter states, lamenting the end of the lucrative “Trump bump.”
The Intercept claims that the additional funding has allowed the outlet to be “able to take on more and more ambitious and hard-hitting investigative reporting.” However, anyone who is familiar with how the blog split with their founder Glenn Greenwald understands that this notion is laughably false.
Big League Politics has reported on how Greenwald quit The Intercept after the publication refused to allow him to scrutinize the record of President-imposed Joe Biden in the lead-up to last year’s farce of an election:
Left-wing journalist Glenn Greenwald announced on Thursday that he will depart from The Intercept, the publication he co-founded to publish news outside of the fake news media-industrial complex, because the organization has transformed into everything they were founded to oppose.
Greenwald published the rationale behind his departure on Substack, explaining how his writing critical to Democrat presidential contender Joe Biden was censored by the outlet.
“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,” he said.
“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,” Greenwald added.
Greenwald explained that he could not stay with The Intercept since they had violated journalistic ethics to shill for Biden.
“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,” Greenwald wrote.
“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,” he added.
No organization deserves to go bankrupt more than The Intercept, but unfortunately their billionaire backers, including Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar, will likely bail them out and keep them afloat despite lack of interest.
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