Journalist Glenn Greenwald slams MSNBC and CNN for ‘dangerous’ failure to investigate issues

Firebrand journalist Glenn Greenwald has slammed mainstream media outlets including CNN and MSNBC for their ‘dangerous’ failure to investigate important issues while praising Fox News as the only channel willing to present differing opinions.

Greenwald launched his attack in an appearance on Aidan McLaughlin’s podcast The Interview, saying: ‘I do think that the Trump-era has transformed liberal outlets like CNN and MSNBC in a way that I do think makes them worse than Fox.’ 

He said that during the Trump presidency, mainstream media outlets began to put more faith into security agency reports, and have not done their due diligence to investigate contrary claims.

‘Mainstream media outlets are far too reliant upon and trusting of the security state agencies that exist in order to deceive and manipulate the public, and to disseminate propaganda and lies,’ said Greenwald, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Edward Snowden NSA leaks in 2014. 

Glenn Greenwald said in an interview this week that he thought news channels like MSNBC and CNN were becoming dangerous as they have not been investigating claims the reporters do not agree with, and praised FOX News for offering a differing opinion

He said he finds ‘few things more offensive than the doling out of cable news contributorships’ to former political officials, especially those whom liberals criticized as being ‘authoritarian’ during the Bush administration, McLaughlin wrote in a blog post  accompanying the episode.

‘To watch these Bush-Cheney operatives – like Nicole Wallace and Matthew Dowd and so many other ones, the Lincoln Project scumbags, but also all those security state operatives like Michael Hayden … or John Brennan, who was working with the CIA, and especially the neocons who were the worst of the worst from that perspective – like Bill Kristol and David Frum and Jen Rubin, Max Boot – now be turned into icons and leaders of American liberalism,’ he said. 

‘I can’t find the words for how damaging and stunning that is.’

Greenwald appeared to be more tolerant of Fox News, which has invited him on its shows, saying it covers topics and views that MSNBC and CNN won’t.

‘The reason I started writing about politics was because I wanted to draw attention to things that I thought were receiving insufficient attention from the rest of the media,’ he explained.

‘If all I wanted to do was just to write about everything that was already being covered by the New York Times or CBS News, there [would] have been no reason for me to change careers and create a blog.’

Greenwald called out news contributors like Nicolle Wallace, left, a former White House Communications director under the George W. Bush administration, who is now working as an MSNBC host. She is pictured here with Chuck Todd, host of MSNBC's 'Meet the Press'

Greenwald called out news contributors like Nicolle Wallace, left, a former White House Communications director under the George W. Bush administration, who is now working as an MSNBC host. She is pictured here with Chuck Todd, host of MSNBC’s ‘Meet the Press’

Matthew Dowd, a chief strategist for the Bush-Cheney 2004 presidential campaign, has also appeared on news programs to offer his insights. He is pictured here with Heidi Heitikamp for ABC News' coverage of Super Tuesday last year

Matthew Dowd, a chief strategist for the Bush-Cheney 2004 presidential campaign, has also appeared on news programs to offer his insights. He is pictured here with Heidi Heitikamp for ABC News’ coverage of Super Tuesday last year

Greenwald started writing for The Guardian in 2013, earning a Pulitzer the next year for publishing a series of reports detailing previously unknown information about American and British surveillance programs, based on documents he obtained from Edward Snowden.

In 2014 he helped co-found the media website The Intercept, but resigned in October, at which point he started publishing on Substack, a newsletter-based journalism platform.

He said he resigned from the company he co-founded over a culture of ‘repression censorship and ideological homogeny’ at the site he created after ‘seeing there were a lot of constraints imposed on journalism and our ability to report freely against all kinds of institutions.’

In a scathing essay, Greenwald described the ‘final, precipitating cause’ of his departure from The Intercept, writing its ‘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.’

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Greenwald has appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show in the past, but said he has been critical of the station as well, and had once called Carlson out for alleged race-baiting. He is pictured here talking to Carlson following his departure from The Intercept in October

He has since continued to be critical of the media, slamming reporters at The New York Times, CNN and NBC for being ‘hall-monitor reporters.’

‘A new and rapidly growing journalistic “beat” has arisen over the last several years that can best be described as an unholy mix of junior high hall-monitor tattling and Stasi-like citizen surveillance,’ he wrote in February.

‘They have insufficient talent or skill, and even less desire, to take on real power centers…so settle on this penny-ante, trivial bulls*** — tattling, hall monitoring, speech policing.’

‘These examples of journalism being abused to demand censorship of spaces they cannot control are too numerous to comprehensively chronicle.’

He added: ‘They do it in part for power: to ensure nobody but they can control the flow of information. They do it partly for ideology and out of hubris: the belief that their worldview is so indisputably right that all dissent is inherently dangerous “disinformation.” 

‘And they do it from petty vindictiveness: they clearly get aroused — find otherwise-elusive purpose — by destroying people’s reputations and lives, no matter how powerless.’

He has also called out Facebook for censoring posts about the COVID vaccine, telling FOX News host Tucker Carlson in February that the social media giant did not want to take down posts about the vaccine, but did it due to pressure from liberals.

‘They would rather stay as far away from censoring and arbitrating and intervening and kicking people off their platforms – not because they are noble or nice, but it’s in their best interest not to do it,’ he said.

‘They are being pressured to do it. By CNN and NBC and The New York Times who are saying: every time you allow information over the platform that we think is wrong, we’re going to shame you, disgrace you.

‘And they have partners who are the Democratic Party who control the entire government were right or along with them, saying we demand you censor more.’

Earlier this month, Greenwald took to Twitter to criticize CNN anchor Brian Stelter for his softball questions to White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki in a one-on-one interview

Earlier this month, Greenwald took to Twitter to criticize CNN anchor Brian Stelter for his softball questions to White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki in a one-on-one interview

Earlier this month, he also called out CNN anchor Brian Stelter for asking White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki only softball questions in an exclusive interview.

Stelter’s first question to her was, ‘What does the press get wrong when covering Biden’s agenda?’

Psaki replied: ‘Some of our muscles have atrophied a little bit over the last few years, and there isn’t a lot of memory — recent memory or longer memory — on how long it takes to get legislation forward or how messy the process of negotiating and the process of getting legislation across the finish line can be.

‘So we know, we understand everybody is always looking for a deadline, a timeline, things like that,’ she continued. ‘I don’t know if that’s the press getting it wrong. I’ll leave you to the critique of that, Brian.’

Greenwald responded to the interview by tweeting it was ‘one of the most sycophantic interviews of a state official you’ll ever see.’ 

Some liberals have since called him out for his remarks in recent months, claiming he must support former President Donald Trump, despite calling Trump a ‘game show host and a charlatan, a real estate salesman’ who ‘ended up being a weak president, incapable of doing much of what his rhetoric suggested he intended to do’ in the interview this week.

He also pointed out that he has been critical of Fox News throughout his career, and even once called out Tucker Carlson for alleged race-baiting. 

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