Are We Living in a Post-Corporate Media Society?

“We believe the prime value of journalism is that it imposes transparency, and thus accountability, on those who wield the greatest governmental and corporate power. Our journalists will be not only permitted, but encouraged, to pursue stories without regard to whom they might alienate.”

Those words were written by Jeremy Scahill, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras in February 2014, when the trio officially launched The Intercept, with the backing of First Look Media (FLM) and billionaire Pierre Omidyar.

FLM had audacious goals. Along with operating an investigative newsroom helmed by some of the most star-studded journalists of the time, FLM had planned to fund three additional digital news magazines, including one called Racket, which was to be led by Matt Taibbi, a rising star in the journalism world following a series of scoops for Rolling Stone.

The Intercept was the only outlet to see the light of day. In its 10 years, it has largely lived up to its aspirations as an anti-establishment force in media while suffering its share of embarrassment.

It burst out of the gate with article after article informed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s disclosures. Its first story ever published was a bombshell: Greenwald and Scahill learned that the U.S. government was prioritizing electronic surveillance over human intelligence for drone strikes, inevitably resulting in civilian casualties.

A year later, it published the “Drone Papers,” a damning account of the U.S. government’s preferred war-fighting tool. The 10-part series, also released as a book, lifted the veil on President Obama’s lethal campaign, including extraordinary details about the president’s infamous kill list.

But in recent years, the outlet, once brimming with revolutionary spirit, has become a corporatized mess, divorced from its founding ideology. There was a very public falling out between The Intercept and Greenwald. There have been multiple waves of newsroom layoffs. Some of its most talented reporters have left of their own volition, including Ken Klippenstein, among the most dogged security state and military reporters in the business.

Its doctrine of journalistic source protection became tarnished after it failed to protect whistleblower Reality Winner, who the Department of Justice accused of being its source for a story about Russian cyberattacks.

Among the biggest critics of the Winner debacle was Poitras. In an interview with Ben Smith, formerly of The New York Times, Poitras called the outlet’s internal investigation “a cover-up and betrayal of core values,” adding that “the lack of any meaningful accountability promoted a culture of impunity and puts future sources at risk.”

Faced with what on the outside appeared to be a crisis of morale, Scahill and Ryan Grim, the outlet’s top political correspondent, reportedly offered to take over the publication. The idea was for The Intercept to be effectively run by the newsroom, rather than corporate brass. The offer, as Grim confirmed this week, was rejected. So Scahill and Grim devised a new plan—leave The Intercept for good.

The Age of Indie Media?

When The Intercept first emerged, anyone tangentially reporting on the security state, mass surveillance, and civil liberties—the three areas in which the outlet made its mark—considered it an encouraging sign amid industry-wide turbulence. There appeared to be a yearning for investigative journalism, which is notoriously expensive. That some of the heaviest hitters in journalism were joining forces was surely a sign that a media utopia was on the horizon.

Why not? We were just coming off the Snowden leaks. Indie journalists, mostly on the left, had united to provide invaluable coverage of Chelsea Manning’s court-martial amid mainstream media indifference.

And here we are again. Scahill and Grim can make a new version of The Intercept under a new name, without the baggage. The outlet, Drop Site, lives on Substack (naturally) and promises to include former Intercept staffers, and maybe even former colleagues who were unceremoniously cast aside.

The duo’s pivot isn’t without risk. Aside from an undisclosed amount of funding from The Intercept (we can only speculate why that is), there’s no sustained institutional support for the venture. If all goes well, that will come in the form of paid subscribers. And to really make this work, we’ll likely have to read more from Scahill, one of the most well-sourced and accomplished reporters on the foreign affairs beat. If so, we will all be better off.

Drop Site comes as attention has diverted away from Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and instead to brewing political storms, including in the U.S. So what does Scahill do for his first story away from the friendly confines of The Intercept but deliver a necessary report on the motivations and political calculations of Hamas—a subject the corporate press would likely avoid at all costs.

While Grim is an expert on national political affairs, he’s also played an outsized role in reporting on the United States flexing its muscle to help oust Pakistan’s former prime minister, Imran Khan, who was democratically elected.

Their former colleague, Klippenstein, has also moved to Substack, where he recently reported on the growing U.S. troop presence in Jordan—the site of the killing of three U.S. service members earlier this year.

Outside of The Intercept’s sphere of influence, there’s Spencer Ackerman, one of the most prolific journalists documenting U.S. hegemony. The former Pulitzer winner publishes Forever Wars, which does the vital work of providing non-stop coverage of the U.S. war machine, America’s ever-expanding surveillance apparatus and corporate incentives that fuel endless war.

Does the corporate media still have a monopoly on foreign affairs coverage? That goes without saying. But whether they acknowledge it or not, there will always be U.S. imperial propaganda undergirding such reporting. If you have any doubts, relive the last nine months. Or just juxtapose recent headlines from the Times about Putin’s bombing of civilian infrastructure in Ukraine this week to deadly strikes by Israel in Gaza. The bias is entrenched.

At least the likes of Scahill, Grim and Ackerman will be transparent about their motivations.

“At all times, Forever Wars’ reporting is guided by an explicit point of view—specifically, a socialist perspective that demands the destruction of the War on Terror, U.S. global hegemony, and the American Exceptionalism that created and sustains them,” reads Ackerman’s publication’s mission statement.

We’re living in a new media age. Again. It’s up to these journalists to live up to the standards they’ve set, and for us to pitch in when we can.

Image Source

• Drop Site logo via dropsitenews.com. Changes were made.