News media figures are rewarded for hyping false narratives — such as the “Russian election hacking” and “collusion” storylines — with career benefits, said The Intercept’s frontman Glenn Greenwald on Tuesday during an interview with Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson.
Journalists and reporters hyping “interference,” “hacking”, and “collusion” narratives regarding Russia “pay no price” while enjoying “enormous benefits,” said Greenwald:
They get enormous benefits when they publish recklessly. They get applause, applause on social media from their peers; they get zillions of retweets; huge amounts of traffic; they end up on TV. They get applauded across the spectrum because people are so giddy and eager to hear more about this Russia and Trump story, and when their stories get completely debunked, everybody agrees to ignore it. everyone moves on, and they pay no price.
Government sources — referred to previously by Greenwald as composing the “deep state” — feeding mostly unverifiable information to news media figures are serving their own political interests in seeking to subvert, suggested Greenwald.
At the same time, they’re feeding and pleasing their sources by publishing these stories that their sources want them to publish, and so there are huge amounts of career benefits and reputational benefits and very little cost when they publish stories that end up being debunked because the narrative they’re serving is a popular one, at least among their peer circles.
Watch part of Greenwald’s comments below.
Greenwald did not comment on widespread left-wing and partisan Democrat attitudes among his peers and colleagues across the news media industry.
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