Most of the mainstream news media has been “concocting excuses” to ignore The Post’s exposé about Hunter Biden’s emails — which actually justify hard questions for Joe Biden, according to award-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald.
In a 6,000-word draft of the article that led him to resign from The Intercept, Greenwald also blamed the lack of coverage on widespread antipathy toward President Trump among American reporters and editors.
“The reality is the U.S. press has been planning for this moment for four years — cooking up justifications for refusing to report on newsworthy material that might help Donald Trump get re-elected,” he wrote.
“One major factor is the undeniable truth that journalists with national outlets based in New York, Washington and West Coast cities overwhelmingly not just favor Joe Biden but are desperate to see Donald Trump defeated.”
Greenwald used the Substack website to self-publish his lengthy attack after saying editors at The Intercept — which he co-founded in 2014 — “censored an article I wrote this week, refusing to publish it unless I remove all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, the candidate vehemently supported by all New York-based Intercept editors involved in this effort at suppression.”
Greenwald titled his article, “THE REAL SCANDAL: U.S. MEDIA USES FALSEHOODS TO DEFEND JOE BIDEN FROM HUNTER’S EMAILS.”
In it, he said that The Post’s exclusives and subsequent articles from a handful of others “provoked extraordinary efforts by a de facto union of media outlets, Silicon Valley giants and the intelligence community to suppress these stories.”
“One outcome is that the Biden campaign concluded, rationally, that there is no need for the front-running presidential candidate to address even the most basic and relevant questions raised by these materials,” he wrote.
“Rather than condemn Biden for ignoring these questions — the natural instinct of a healthy press when it comes to a presidential election — journalists have instead led the way in concocting excuses to justify his silence.”
As an example, Green cited a tweet by National Public Radio’s public editor that said, “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers time on stories that are just pure distractions.”
Greenwald also pointed to a segment of the CNN program “Amanpour” that was televised on Sunday and featured an appearance by Elizabeth Harrington, national spokesperson for the Republican National Committee.
“CNN’s Christiane Amanpour barely pretended to be interested in any journalism surrounding the story, scoffing during an interview at requests from the RNC’s Elizabeth Harrington to cover the story and verify the documents by telling her: ‘We’re not going to do your work for you,’” he wrote.
Greenwald, who helped The Guardian US win the 2014 Pulitzer Prize by working with whistleblower Edward Snowden to expose secret surveillance by the National Security Agency, said the questions raised by Hunter Biden’s emails and other documents “are as glaring as they are important.”
Greenwald also published an email that he said he sent the Biden campaign with nine questions “about these documents that the public has the absolute right to know.”
They included, “Are any specific emails published by the New York Post purportedly either to or from Hunter Biden, or which reference Vice President Biden, fabricated or fraudulently altered? If so, which ones? Has Vice President Biden discussed with Hunter whether these emails are authentic?”
“Though the Biden campaign indicated that they would respond to the Intercept’s questions, they have not done so,” he wrote in his draft article.
“A statement they released to other outlets contains no answers to any of these questions except to claim that Biden ‘has never even considered being involved in business with his family, nor in any business overseas.’”
In response to Greenwald’s public resignation on Thursday, The Intercept’s editor-in-chief, Betsy Reed, wrote on the site that Greenwald “believes that anyone who disagrees with him is corrupt, and anyone who presumes to edit his words is a censor.”
“The narrative Glenn presents about his departure is teeming with distortions and inaccuracies — all of them designed to make him appear as a victim, rather than a grown person throwing a tantrum,” she wrote.
“While he accuses us of political bias, it was he who was attempting to recycle the dubious claims of a political campaign — the Trump campaign — and launder them as journalism.”
The Biden campaign didn’t return a request for comment.