[ahepp]

Maybe I'm way off here, but it looks like you may think the person you're replying to is saying that Greenwald's article is "a kind of low effort data mining when there is news droughts" (etc)

I believe they are agreeing with Greenwald, and saying that the Times reporter is the one in the wrong.

Or this is just a vexing parse for me

[refurb]

No, you are correct! I completely misread that.