No one will be immune or exempt from the culture crowd of cancellation as long as the media continues to use it as a weapon to silence its critics and limit freedom of expression, investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald warned over the weekend.
Greenwald sounded on Twitter Thursday, after a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times was fired from his work at the think tank because of a tweet that jokingly suggested that former Vice President Mike Pence be lynched to unify the country.
NYT CONTRIBUTOR LOSES THINK TANK WORK AT TWEET SUGGESTING BIDEN ‘LYNCH MIKE PENCE’
Greenwald exposed his complaints in an opinion article published in Substack over the weekend, where he defended the author and destroyed his “idiot” of shooting at the hands of the “centrist technocratic think tank he worked for”.
“In the prevailing climate, the rational choice is to avoid social scorn and ostracism, no matter how unfounded the complaints that we must appease,” wrote Greenwald.
The investigative journalist has long been alert to the dangers of media distrust caused by a recent adoption of the culture of cancellation, but the latest attack, he said, sends a strong message: You can believe it is above the fray, but it is a matter of time before the media crowd “comes after you”.
“Release this monster and one day it will come after you,” wrote Greenwald. “And you will have no principle to credibly plead in protest when that happens.”
In a subsequent appearance on Sunday Morning Futures, Greenwald pointed to a new survey by global communications firm Edelman, which revealed that only 46 percent of Americans trust traditional media.
“They are losing faith and confidence, and this is not a sudden event. It has been happening for years,” he told hostess Maria Bartiromo.
The reason, he believes, is that the mainstream media has adopted an answer to blame “others who criticize their reports, their bad reports, as if they were being unjustly maligned.”
“The rational choice is to avoid social scorn and ostracism, no matter how unfounded the complaints are to be appeased.”
“When that doesn’t work,” he said, “what they are doing now is a third response, which is to try to censor their critics and those who are really inspiring confidence by saying to expel these people from the Internet, your audience is too big, censor these people, play your platform on the Internet. “
What the media failed to ask is “what have they done that is causing the public to lose faith and trust,” he explained. “And instead of doing that, they are now at the point where they are defending censorship to force the public to listen to them.”