[jgacook]

Not the first sketchy thing spotted at The Intercept. Read also this excerpt on Glenn Greenwald's spurious reporting of Michael Flynn's prosecution: https://www.emptywheel.net/2020/05/19/glenn-greenwalds-inven...

Old adage about incompetence and maliciousness being indistinguishable applies, but having whistleblowers land in jail MULTIPLE times should raise eyebrows for such a young news organization.

Wondering if The Intercept belongs in the nether world of "news" organizations (read: thinly veiled propaganda outlets) along with InfoWars, RT, etc.

[dmix]

> but having whistleblowers land in jail MULTIPLE times should raise eyebrows for such a young news organization.

Or it shows how difficult security is when trying to stay anonymous when your opposition is a highly motivated spy agency with an incredible amount of power and access. Especially when you worked from them and your trail of evidence is in their highly monitored networks/offices (Winner for example used the office printer to print out classified docs).

Although I'm not defending the practices of these two journalists.

[_iyig]

>Wondering if The Intercept belongs in the nether world of "news" organizations (read: thinly veiled propaganda outlets) along with InfoWars, RT, etc.

It's worth noting that the submission is a link to The Gray Zone, which in my view falls squarely into that category. Their founder Max Blumenthal is a frequent contributor to Sputnik and RT. He also attended the same expenses-paid 2015 gala in Russia, celebrating RT's 10-year anniversary, at which Jill Stein and Mike Flynn were photographed sitting with Vladimir Putin. Flynn was later caught lying about taking payments from the Russian government in connection to the event:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/05/flynn-putin-din...

One month after attending this gala, Blumenthal founded The Gray Zone. Its funding sources remain opaque. He also did a 180 from his earlier anti-Assad reporting to become one of the dictator's biggest supporters:

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/bruce-bawer/usef...

He's also published pro-state narratives for other dictators. Here's a 2019 video of Max cheerfully receiving honors from Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who has ruled that country by violence and decree since 2015:

https://twitter.com/NicolasMaduro/status/1156588153945427970

And here's a piece that goes into detail on errors in The Gray Zone's reporting from Latin America:

https://medium.com/muros-invisibles/grayzone-grifters-and-th...

[jgacook]

Interesting - thanks for the info! It's a good personal reminder to always vet my sources and keep reporting outlets accountable.