Politico's Passive Aggressive Attack On Glenn Greenwald: 'History. Or Journalism. Or Treason. Or Something'

from the oh-really? dept

Fri, Sep 5th 2014 10:02am — Mike Masnick

Politico is known as the snarky DC-based publication that seems to thrive on considering itself part of the infamous "church of the savvy," where reporting on the play-by-play of the horse race of politics is more important than exposing the truth. However, it apparently has a bit of an inferiority complex when it comes to Glenn Greenwald. A bizarre "profile" of Greenwald by Michael Hirsh tries to make the argument that Greenwald has "peaked" mainly because Politico appears to really, really, really want that to be true. Of course, as Jay Rosen pointed out, this is hardly the first time that Politico has asserted that Glenn Greenwald was over as a story. The site did so back in July of 2013, just a month after the first Snowden revelations, claiming "the new cycle has moved on" and "Greenwald doesn't seem to have any more big revelations up his sleeve."

Of course, in the 14 months since that was published, Greenwald has broken numerous huge stories about the intelligence community (many much bigger than the original stories), including how the NSA/GCHQ abused the information they had to destroy reputations, plans to infect millions of computers with malware, how the NSA has an internal blog where an analyst brags about "hunting sysadmins" at powerful companies, how the NSA has recorded every phone call in a couple of countries, and how the FBI spied on prominent Muslim Americans. And much more. Plus he wrote a book. But, you know, no more big revelations.

The new piece from Hirsh has this perfectly ridiculous line about Greenwald, which shows the level of misguided "snark" in the article:

The rest is history. Or journalism. Or treason. Or something.

What is it? Who cares? We're just calling the horse races, and this Greenwald guy is a distraction, apparently.

This sort of tone is found throughout the piece, including this bizarre line:

Will there be many more Snowdens to come, based on Greenwald’s “model”? Perhaps. But it’s more likely that Greenwald Inc. has already peaked.

Of course, this comes just weeks after it was recognized (even by Politico!) that The Intercept is working with a new leaker who is clearly not Snowden, because the terrorism watchlist guidelines that Greenwald's The Intercept published came out after Snowden had already fled.

But, why bother with facts when the goal is to smear Greenwald as an also-ran?

There are many more problems with the piece, starting with the idea that anyone can even measure whether someone has "peaked" or not. But the whole thing has no facts in it, but just appears to be Politico's wishful thinking that this pesky outsider might just fade away.

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Filed Under: glenn greenwald, michael hirsh, politico
Companies: politico

22 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 5 Sep 2014 @ 10:10am

jealousy lol
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Violynne (profile), 5 Sep 2014 @ 10:11am

Politico confused Glenn Greenwald with Glenn Beck.

Not sure how. One has journalistic integrity. The other has a basement full of food.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Sep 2014 @ 10:18am

Man crush? Sorry, he's taken.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Sep 2014 @ 10:19am

this is what happens when someone wants to be 'up there' with those who write great articles, release great stories, give great pieces and amounts of information to the people, but hasn't the skill and isn't trusted enough to be given' first hand, earth-shattering' stories him/herself!! trying to condemn and/or ridicule others shows where they are on the 'journalistic ladder' and that's trying to get on the bottom rung!!
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TasMot (profile), 5 Sep 2014 @ 10:24am

And they missed a great opportunity
to use the Happy Days meme: "Has Greenwald Jumped the Shark?"
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Mason Wheeler (profile), 5 Sep 2014 @ 10:27am

Re:
You know, out of all the many, many things you could say about Glenn Beck, it seems a it odd that you would choose to pick on him over one of the few things that actually makes perfect sense...
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Sep 2014 @ 10:30am

Has Politico peaked?
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Jeremy2020 (profile), 5 Sep 2014 @ 10:32am

I didn't know people actually read politico. Through it was a meme itself.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Sep 2014 @ 10:44am

Re:
You mean like FoxNews?
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Beaux, 5 Sep 2014 @ 10:56am

Re: Re:
You misspelled Faux.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Sep 2014 @ 10:57am

Re:
No you rofl
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Sep 2014 @ 11:00am

Re: Re:
Who said he picked on him. If you have nothing positive to say about him, make it apparent in any way you like. Saying something neutral and completely off point tells enough.
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That One Guy (profile), 5 Sep 2014 @ 11:02am

'The fine, bitter taste of a '14, with just a slight aftertaste of tears of jealousy'
With all those sour grapes, they might want to consider dropping the 'news' part of their business and changing focus into starting and running a whinery. If this is any indication, they'd probably be pretty good at it.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Sep 2014 @ 11:38am

Response to: Violynne on Sep 5th, 2014 @ 10:11am
Glenn Beck is also a raging hypocrite on 1st amendment issues. Issuing DMCA takedown notices to people who mock him online
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aem, 5 Sep 2014 @ 12:52pm

and the guys at pando are eating this up anything that has to do with going against greenwald is promoted by carr and company. While I like some of their reporting on tech stuff they clearly have it out for greenwald.
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Get off my cyber-lawn! (profile), 5 Sep 2014 @ 2:06pm

Happy Days meme
No, this is a case of POLITICO ignoring the shark beneath them while yelling "Greenwald is history!".
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Sep 2014 @ 2:37pm

Glenn Greenwald will have always peaked compared to Politico who just sits aimlessly in the valley.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Sep 2014 @ 4:15pm

Re: Re: Re:
A division* of MiniTrue!
*Other divisions include but not limited to CNN, MSNBC, etc
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Mike-2 Alpha (profile), 5 Sep 2014 @ 4:22pm

Re: Re:
No, no... he's not picking on Beck for that. He's just following the old saying about how if you can't say anything nice, you shouldn't say anything at all. Like this:

As a professional journalist, Glenn Greenwald has journalistic integrity.

As a professional journalist, Glenn Beck... has a basement full of food.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Sep 2014 @ 4:38pm

Re: Re: Re:
Is he still hawking that gold scam?
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art guerrilla (profile), 5 Sep 2014 @ 5:11pm

Re: Response to: Violynne on Sep 5th, 2014 @ 10:11am
i'm going to googleize it in a second, but if you have a link to that, i would be interested...
don't recall if techdirtia did any stories along those lines... seems like they would have if beck was abusing the situation...
oh, NOT a beck fan in any way, just wondering...
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nasch (profile), 6 Sep 2014 @ 6:39pm

Greenwald, Inc.
But it’s more likely that Greenwald Inc. has already peaked.

"Greenwald Inc.": a not so subtle attempt to imply that Greenwald and others like him are just in it for the money.
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