You misunderstand what's going on here. Greenwald is making fun of people who consider themselves journalists but who spend their days trawling through social media to find things to create outrage drama posts about, instead of doing real actual journalism. The DNC operative thing is obviously not intended literally; it's like calling somebody a lapdog or a bootlicker or an apologist. Note that in that thread the response from the "Bernie-hating worm" was to tattle to youtube and demand the video gets taken down because he "fears for his safety". Good grief.
Glenn absolutely doesn't believe that "everyone is out to get me", but he has, unlike many of his critics, faced very serious criminal charges by corrupt prosecutors, got guns pointed at his face, and he has to live with 24/7 armed guards because people want to shut him up for good. We're not talking about the casual death threats people receive just for being opinionated online, but the kind where they send you pictures of your house, your cars, and of the school your children go to.
Given that context, yeah, I understand why he has contempt for journalists who don't put anything on the line and spend their days on meaningless social media twaddle.
> My impression of Glenn Greenwald is that he is either paranoid, or willing to stoke his readers' paranoia in order to attract attention.
Maybe it’s both
Glenn has good reason to be paranoid. As someone who read his work for years, I’d say that within the past couple of years his writings have become more and more delusional. He left The Intercept over a fact-checking spat in which his editors were in the right, but he claimed censorship. The issue was over Joe Biden’s son, so a big step down from privacy, surveillance, and the work he did before.
but he's better than a lot of the other crappy grifters
A journalist should neither accuse, without evidence, someone else of being a 'DNC operative', nor claim, without verifying, that that person opposes a particular political candidate. The gravity of slandering someone that way, to me, is self-evident. It doesn't matter if the person he slanders is a saint or a piece of garbage.
If the person whose tweet I linked is truly a 'tool' (and I'm open to that possibility), then Greenwald could just have left it at calling him a 'worm'. That's fair game since it's a matter of opinion.
I agree and disagree. He definitely wasn't very professional in his remarks and could have toned it down but in that clip Glenn said exactly why he thinks that way. And this was on a podcast (i.e. his personal opinion), not an article posted to a news outlet.
The 'tool' even did exactly what Glenn accused him of on that thread, taking short clips of people he doesn't like out of context and disparaging them. Seems to be his MO. Again, I don't love Glenn but overall I feel he's decent and usually does actual journalism instead of playing silly games most of the time.
taking short clips of people he doesn't like out of context and disparaging them
I'm sure Greenwald makes fair accusations at times. The problem I have is with the false accusations.
That said, I'll concede the point to you. For me to continue in an honorable fashion, I would have to listen to the Greenwald episode your comment references, which I was unaware existed. For all I know, in that podcast, he would convince me that both the problem claims are true.
The thing is, I do not want to spend the next half hour (probably longer) listening to a Glenn Greenwald podcast :)
> The thing is, I do not want to spend the next half hour (probably longer) listening to a Glenn Greenwald podcast :)
Can't blame you for that haha, there are better things to do. I'll admit my opinion of him dropped a little seeing that clip in the tweet you linked... just not very professional, even if the other guy may deserve it.
Glenn absolutely doesn't believe that "everyone is out to get me", but he has, unlike many of his critics, faced very serious criminal charges by corrupt prosecutors, got guns pointed at his face, and he has to live with 24/7 armed guards because people want to shut him up for good. We're not talking about the casual death threats people receive just for being opinionated online, but the kind where they send you pictures of your house, your cars, and of the school your children go to.
Given that context, yeah, I understand why he has contempt for journalists who don't put anything on the line and spend their days on meaningless social media twaddle.