The Intercept is rife with contradictions and problems. They hired Risen to do #Russiagate straight, and poorly, as a counterweight to Greenwald. They have a possible inside plant, the guy who burned Reality Winner (and who's name I keep forgeting). They're crapping out on the Snowden archive. But they put out a lot of excellent reporting from Lee Fang and others and I love what Scahill does with his show. At the back of the thing is still the highly suspect Omidyar, who obviously didn't just hand over a quarter-billion to Greenwald as some initially thought. He's in charge, it's his business. He managed to turn off Taibbi from running his own version of The Intercept -- I don't even know if any other First Look projects exist currently? Silverstein, who was also there and then quit, basically marks them out as a honeytrap (more moneytrap) for investigative journalism set up by some inside-intel crew, but he's also got serious personal issues, calling various principals "monsters" (Laura Poitras is a monster? Really?) or mocking their appearance, and to top it off his fuck-off to The Intercept was published in Politico -- one of the most obvious new spook propaganda vehicles in circulation, literally started from the inheritance of the owner of the CIA bank!!! (Riggs). Silverstein, like Sibel Edmonds taking on the same target, approaches it with overkill and the kitchen sink, doesn't care to focus on three solid points when thirty calumnies can be added.
I agree that Greenwald's work is unique and indispensable in the sense that no one else at that level of prominence is hitting this critique of the corporate media, usually thorough and pitch-perfect. Plus he's on top of the Bolsonaro death squad story, in fact near the center of it by virtue of his husband in the Rio city government.
Plus he's obviously the next dream target of those who seek Assange's extradition. If the motto of "two times is enemy action" applies, the Xeni Jardin tweet about GG being Putin's funnel for money to Assange (!!!) follows NPR's false introduction of Greenwald as one of Assange's associates, which he has never been (and they have of course at times attacked each other in public). As with Assange, a lot of people hate him (or have chosen to target him) for being him, matters of real personal failures, personality or style (including things about him I rather like, since he doesn't pretend he's not smarter than some very stupid people). This is always in lieu of avoiding what he does as a writer and reporter, which is what should matter. Of course it was what matters to those targeting them. The 2010 leaks for which Assange is actually indicted, the DNC leak for which Schumer thinks he was indicted, or the Vault 7 leak as Arkin would have it (very believably), are why Assange is targeted, no matter how much catshit he may have thrown at the embassy wall (which is bullshit, just adopting it as a metaphor).
Arkin is an interesting case of someone who genuinely reads like he's on that impossible middle ground (thanks for linking to his blog coverage, alloneword) but he understands the relative moral weight of accusations (say, serial war crimes by state forces, as opposed to anything claimed about Assange) and ends up at the right place anyway:
Is he guilty? I’ve been asked many times in the last 24 hours. My answer is yes, on these narrow charges, just like any protestor resorting to civil disobedience is guilty. But I say, more important than whether he is guilty and odious as an individual, he is also symbol of a bigger sickness, where we all consume today’s episodes and avoid the deeper issues of secrecy and perpetual warfare. In my mind, the mainstream news media, in not doing its job better, especially on national security, contributes to a lack of basic government accountability. That increases the power of the national security establishment – the bringers of this expulsion, arrest and indictment – a now so powerful and faceless officialdom that they have a greater vote in how, where and when we fight than does the chief executive or the Congress. Or the people.
There will be more Assange’s, more Snowden’s, more Manning’s, more assaults on the system by those radicalized by their frustrations with this state of affairs. The very people who serve as sources for my article are no different, and I applaud them. So I can’t also at the same time blithely condemn anti-secrecy activists and facilitators, not per se.