Journalist Glenn Greenwald criticized Twitter for inconsistency and censorship following the company’s decision to censor a New York Post story alleging Joe Biden’s son met with a Burisma executive in 2015.
“Look carefully at what Twitter is saying to justify censoring the Biden story,” Greenwood tweeted Thursday, referring to the company’s statement about its policy on the distribution of hacked materials.”If applied consistently, it’d mean that some of history’s most consequential journalism — the Pentagon Papers, WikiLeaks’ war logs, Snowden docs, Panama Papers, our Brazil Archive — would be banned.”
Look carefully at what Twitter is saying to justify censoring the Biden story. If applied consistently, it’d mean that some of history’s most consequential journalism — the Pentagon Papers, WikiLeaks’ war logs, Snowden docs, Panama Papers, our Brazil Archive — would be banned. pic.twitter.com/pQziZr1qwT
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 15, 2020
Twitter began blocking tweets Wednesday afternoon from being posted that contained links to the New York Post’s report on alleged emails that purportedly show Hunter Biden offered to introduce then-Vice President Joe Biden to an executive of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma. (RELATED: Twitter Is Using Its ‘Hacked Info’ Policy To Suppress The NYPost Story, But There’s One Big Problem)
“We can’t complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful,” Twitter told users who attempted to post a tweet containing a link to the Post’s story. “In line with our Hacked Materials Policy, as well as our approach to blocking URLs, we are taking action to block any links to or images of the material in question on Twitter,” a Twitter spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“So much of the important journalism you read is based on a source providing to journalists “content obtained without authorization,” Greenwald continued. “Beyond the above examples, why doesn’t Twitter ban links to the NYT’s stories based on Trump’s tax returns, ‘obtained without authorization?'”
So much of the important journalism you read is based on a source providing to journalists “content obtained without authorization.”
Beyond the above examples, why doesn’t Twitter ban links to the NYT’s stories based on Trump’s tax returns, “obtained without authorization?”
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 15, 2020
There’s no evidence at the moment the Post relied on hacked materials for its report.
According to the Post, the email was part of a “massive trove of data recovered from a laptop computer” that was dropped off at a Delaware computer repair shop in April 2019. The owner of the repair shop said the customer never came back to pay for the service and retrieve the computer, the Post reported.
The owner of the shop did not positively identify the person who dropped off the laptop as Hunter Biden but said the computer did contain a sticker from the Beau Biden Foundation, according to the Post.
The Daily Caller has not independently confirmed the authenticity of the email.
Many defended Twitter’s decision to censor the story, claiming dubious sourcing or misinformation. Greenwald responded to a user who commented that the suppression of the story, and other stories that have historically been consequential, is “good.”
Please don’t be deceived. The authoritarian mindset expressed below — celebrating mass censorship of journalism they dislike — is absolutely a significant strain in current US liberalism, which is why so many of them cheered the stunning censorship yesterday: pic.twitter.com/Mz4R8GKUcv
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 15, 2020
Greenwald has long been a critic of the media atmosphere in the U.S. and suppression of the free press, telling Columbia Journalism Review in 2014 that President Barack Obama’s “was the most repressive leader in this regard since Richard Nixon” for his unprecedented attacks on journalism. Greenwald is best known for being one of three journalists that Edward Snowden shared thousands of classified U.S. surveillance program documents with in 2013.