Insider digital cultural reporter Rachel Greenspan is appalled at journalist Glenn Greenwald for having the chutzpah to criticize USA Today intern Brenna T. Smith over an article Smith helped write, an article casting a bad light on Capitol riot defendants using crowdfunding websites to raise money for their legal defense.
Here are the tweets from Greenwald that’s got Greenspan crying “harassment”:
Congratulations on using your new journalistic platform to try to pressure tech companies to terminate the ability of impoverished criminal defendants to raise money for their legal defense from online donations. You're well on your way upward in this industry for sure: https://t.co/pvpmX3DaaW
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 28, 2021
Not exaggerating: seems like 50% of journalism these days is finding new ways to pressure and shame tech companies to silence, censor and vanish people from the internet disliked by journalists. Their main cause is not transparency but internet censorshiphttps://t.co/8cLQxkZbAW
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 28, 2021
If you ever find yourself confounded, frustrated or repelled by the behavior of mainstream journalists, just read this relatively short essay by Freddie deBoer which really does explain it all as perfectly and succinctly as anything could:https://t.co/IgnGFEq6nf
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 28, 2021
See also: "Trust in traditional media has declined to an all-time low….For the first time ever, fewer than half of all Americans have trust in traditional media…56% of Americans agree with the statement that "Journalists and reporters are purposely trying to mislead people." pic.twitter.com/V2iMwL18Bi
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 28, 2021
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A society in which the population trusts journalists is important. Democracy needs that.
But that's the opposite of what is happening. And they know that. And – with Trump gone – they know the only pillar holding up the collapsing edifice has vanished.https://t.co/lxvSjiUFvy
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 28, 2021
How dare Greenwald harass a literal INTERN (!!!) like that?!
gl*nn gr**nwald and j*ck posobi*c are directing insane harassment to a literal INTERN (!!!) at USA Today
what kind of grown adult speaks this way to random young women doing their job.. it’s sickening. love this cute industry where harassment is supposedly par for the course. pic.twitter.com/aVsPosKmJ3
— Rachel E. Greenspan (@rach_greenspan) March 29, 2021
Harassment isn’t par for the course, actually. Also, Greenwald’s tweets weren’t harassment. It’s not harassment to point out that a young woman with a byline can get it very wrong.
I like how the journalist for USA Today set out to stop Americans from being able to pay for lawyers, and the defense of the media is "shame on @ggreenwald, we don't actually pay her to do this!"
Is it better that the commissars works for free? pic.twitter.com/qzo4yzspNH
— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) March 29, 2021
If Rachel Greenspan and other stunningly brave journalists have a right to be outraged on Brenna T. Smith’s behalf, Glenn Greenwald certainly has a right to be outraged on his own behalf, and on behalf of others who have been targeted by stunningly brave journalists for not falling into line.
And he is:
This is the dirty little game journalists at major newspapers like @USATODAY play: they use their huge platform to attack and try to ruin the lives of powerless people & private citizens, then depict *themselves* as the fragile victims, the bullied, to bar any criticisms of them. https://t.co/aAzCgRxJmZ
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 29, 2021
I'm going to have an article on this in just a bit. It's a massive scam journalists are running: If you're capable of writing news articles in the largest and most influential papers in the country — attacking private citizens – then you're fair game to be criticized.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 29, 2021
Watching journalists weaponize the language of the voiceless and the marginalized and then apply it to *themselves* — to cast criticisms of them as some moral crime "bullying" or "harassment" — is repugnant. You have the right to criticize journalists at major outlets. Use it.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 29, 2021
By the way: in addition to criticizing the lead reporter on the @USAToday article — the journalist who was put first on the byline by her editors — I also extensively criticized and engaged with the male reporter whose name was lst. Is that allowed? https://t.co/CYiWwzmycR
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 29, 2021
Any time these journalists writing *for major corporate outlets* self-victimize and claim they're the target of "bullying" and "harassment campaigns," ask them what the rules are for permissible critique of their work. There are *none*. That's their scam:https://t.co/g417STxU9y
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 29, 2021
And it’s paid off well for them. They’ve managed to make a pretty good living dishing it while not being able to take it.
Freedom of the press does not mean the press is free from criticism.
— Andre Walker (@amwalker30349) March 29, 2021
Exactly.
And one needn’t agree with everything Glenn Greenwald says to be able to acknowledge that he’s right about the media’s one-sided campaign for truth and justice.
***
Update:
More from Greenwald:
Journalists Attack the Powerless, Then Self-Victimize to Bar Criticisms of Themselveshttps://t.co/1i6NN9kUzY
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 29, 2021
Powerful media figures now invoke sexist and racist tropes to cast themselves as so fragile and marginalized that critiques of their work constitute bullying and assault. pic.twitter.com/7yZWwbYu1g
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 29, 2021
The *only* purpose of that @USAToday article — like so many from CNN, NYT, Daily Beast, etc. — was to ruin the lives of powerless private citizens: prevent them from raising donations for their legal defense!
Then these bullies turn around and self-victimize to bar criticism.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 29, 2021
Note that these USA Today reporters did not merely tattle to tech companies on how these indigent defendants were raising money to try to ruin them.
They took action to have their accounts terminated, and then boasted of their success! That's not journalism: it's harassment. pic.twitter.com/Lt9boRyYWq
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 29, 2021
And then, once they did this grotesque bullying, they declared – in the most sexist way possible – that the journalist that *they* chose as the lead reporter, whose name was first in the byline, is such a fragile young girl that no criticism is warranted: it's abuse. pic.twitter.com/ByV4xkh9VI
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 29, 2021
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