596 Comments

The important part of this story (in my opinion) is that, if you're Carlson or Maddow at a legacy news outlet, YouTube lets you fling your "not to be taken seriously" opinion far and wide, and eagerly promotes it to anyone who ever clicked on an actual news segment.

But if you're a small or independent voice, YouTube reserves the right to "fact check" you (conveniently sourced from a legacy news outlet), block your content, and issue you a strike. Three strikes and you're permanently banned, while Maddow and Carlson gleefully continue to roll up millions of views from their not serious opinions, even though they are broadcast through a serious news banner, which actually makes it far harder for a reasonable person to discern news from opinion.

Simply put, one content standard if you have massive advertising money, another standard if you're a regular schlub.

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Exactly, no fact checking for the spouter of lies Maddow. Lotta good a woke celebrity lesbian w a Ph.D. did for msnbc. But perhaps that was the point.

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Excellent point and I think it is done by design, as in they both are establishment tools anyway so it's fine to spread their lies.

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YouTube and Facebook have taken down Tucker Carlson videos in the past. Covid related videos from Tucker were taken down. The russiagate nonsense from Maddow is still available though.

Also sexual content of a dude penetrating another dude with a Dildo and with a bedsheet in between is allowed and monetized!

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Dear Glenn

Thank you for fighting for the truth and providing us with it.

While I believe in freedom of speech, conning people is not part of it.

Con artists such as Rachel Madow, Cummo, and the like who are cashing on the people ‘s trusts vested in them , are nothing but bunch of charlatans who are invading the news world.

We need true journalists like you now more than ever.

Keep up the good job.

With tremendous respects to you and all those like you.

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Freedom of speech is freedom of speech. Speech can be truthful or it can be dishonest. It can be informative or it can be deceptive. The minute you say, "I support free speech as long as it's not being used to con people." you've lost the thread.

Free speech guarantees have to protect lies and deception otherwise they're worthless. The minute you take the position that lies shouldn't be protected, you have to empower somebody to decide which claims are true and which ones are false, and that's a power that *NOBODY* can ever be trusted with.

When Tucker Carlson and Rachel Maddow lie to their viewers, as both of them obviously did, the only legitimate recourse is to call them out for it so that people can assess their credibility.

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That's one point of view, but it's certainly debatable. If I understand you, you oppose all defamation laws. For example, if Tucker Carlson or Rachel Maddow were to knowingly lie about you, saying for example that you had lynched a black person, raped someone, etc., resulting in the loss of your job, the loss of friends, etc., do you believe that you should have no legal recourse?

The whole point of having a democracy, courts, etc., is to try to find a just way to make such decisions, even knowing that no such system is perfect. The problem with freedom without constraints is that it leaves ruthless and malicious people unconstrained.

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Freedom of speech constrains dishonest speech by giving people the freedom to call it out. If you lie, and I can show that you’re lying, I can destroy your credibility.

The solution to bad speech is more speech, not censorship.

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Andy: "Censorship" is much broader than defamation laws, though one could argue that the use of defamation laws are a specific and narrowly defined form of censorship (through the threat of lawsuits).

In the hypothetical scenario I described (which in some instances really happens), you would be out of a job, and perhaps a home. You would indeed have the recourse of telling reporters that Ms. Maddow had lied about you. It's reasonable to argue that "with great power comes great responsibility" and that you should have a legal right to seek recourse for the harm she caused you, beyond simply saying that she lied. After all, her speech had serious material consequences to you, whereas your speech in self-defense has, by comparison, little or no effect on her (assuming you're just an ordinary citizen).

Similar questions about freedom apply in other contexts (weapons laws, private property, etc.). Which approach one prefers depends partly on one's overall ethical system. I don't think there's ever a perfect solution to such dilemmas.

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Does it?

Someone defames me in free to deal with them, aren’t I?

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In court, in public, or in battle? To which do you refer? If all one has at his disposal is the latter, one really isn't free, is one?

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Why not all three?

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Probably not in practice. How would you "deal with" Rachel Maddow in my hypothetical example?

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I’m smart enough not to get on her radar in the first place.

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Then you have lost some freedom, willingly.

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Funny how many people miss your simple point. I am progressive and can confirm that both sides of the isle are very quick to ban speech that they disagree with, but scream that they protect freedom of speech. The guy you commented on has 33 likes VS 1 (mine) for your comment. The worst part is that Glenn's readerships are smarter then average Joe's but here we are :). Everyone want to ban anything they can't handle be it burning flag or lies.

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Freedom of speech isn’t free

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"Buck o five" IIRC.

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After all the money printing, inflation has quadrupled the cost of freedom. It now sits at $4.20.

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True dat! And despite the early hour, hope that’s a double entendre!

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Thank you for the Cummo giggles.

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I don't know if Carlson's hyperbole is the same as Maddow's. The court was noting that the words Carlson used, "blackmail" and "extortion" are overloaded terms. They have precise, technical meanings for criminal law; but they also have colloquial, non-technical meanings. Most of the time, when people use those terms, I don't take it as meaning that the speaker is accusing the subject of committing the the specific crimes (and even if he or she was, that elements of the crimes will vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction)(yes, I am a former prosecutor). And lets be honest, a lot of blackmail-like and extortion-like behavior happens all the time. It is bad, but it is not criminal.

Maddow, on the other hand, was saying that people were "literally" paid Russian operatives. There are no overloaded terms here. I think her comments were worse than Carlson's.

That said, I agree with the judges in both cases. And I also agree with Greenwald's argument. The liberals misstate what the courts said (and what Fox said about Carlson); yet they are silent regarding Maddow's worse behavior.

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GG is talking about a lawyer who works for Fox but is talking about Carlson. That's pretty far removed (similarly for Maddow). That lawyer is hardly a solid source when it comes to interpretations of what Carlson said. Do we actually know that McDougal didn't extort Trump in the criminal sense? People lie all the time about extra-marital affairs.

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Sorry, “literally” is understood to mean extremely or exasperatingly by many people who don’t even know the traditional meaning.

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....you've really got to edit this to "who literally don't even know the traditional meaning."

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...the literal meaning... FTFY

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Those people are literally illiterate.

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Yes, I understand.

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Right, so defamation and slander is now a thing of the past -because all anyone has to say is "My viewers KNOW I'm not being serious. I don't have to provide a disclaimer that I'm not being serious -it's ASSUMED my news show is fake by my own viewers."

No wonder the western world is falling apart at the seams. It's all scams and bullshittery perpetrated by grease wizards.

Fuck it. Burn it all to the ground.

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Also: Maddow LITERALLY IS HITLER.

My viewers know that I'm only dealing in hyperbole... so I'm safe.

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She should put her fake eyelashes under her nose.

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burn......................

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That is SO worth repeating.....and I can think of a few others who deserve it!

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Maybe I’m too defeatist but it feels like the only logical conclusion of mass media and giving every single person a platform to (mostly anonymously) spout whatever the fuck they want — if talk was cheap before, what’s it valued at now? It feels like a race to the bottom for every attention-starved twat to be as dramatic as possible and not nearly enough people are ignoring the bait to disincentivize it.

It feels weird because it really wasn’t THAT long ago that it would come to blows if one man called another man a liar.

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Ask Alexander Hamilton how that goes.

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There is a difference. Both Carlson and Maddow are opinion journalists, they aren't part of the "news" lineup. Granted, I don't know what the news lineup is on MSNBC, as I never watch it, but at least Fox does have some dedicated journalists there, like Bret Baier.

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I disagree. I, like GG, agree with the rulings. Overall, it is better to let free speech of all forms be unhindered, even by the truth (whatever that is), and let the individual viewer be the judges of what to believe.

Everything else is censorship. And worse: distrust of the individual himself, and subsequent thrashing of individual rights to decide for ourselves, instead of the State.

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The judge is quite correct in saying that no *reasonable* viewer of Rachel Maddow's show would assume her statements have any relation to truth and facts. Note that she evades the question of whether the intersection of "reasonable" and "viewers of Rachel Maddow's show" is an empty set.

More seriously, it's clear to anyone who has spoken with a fan of Ms. Maddow that they tend to absorb whatever she says directly into their belief system (Trump's fans have a similar weakness). So one could argue that Maddow's statement was, in practice, defamatory.

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It's the same thing with readers of KenDiAngelo. No reasonable reader would assume their declarations to have any validity to the real world. Unfortunately, government dikat seems to disagree.

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Contrast this defense of Maddow with the treatment that obvious satire sites such as the Babylon Bee have received from major media outlets like the NYT and Facebook.

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Embarrassing as it is to admit, I was once a Rachel Maddow fan. I knew she was including her own opinion in most of her segments, but I also thought that when she stated something as fact, it was actually a fact. Her statement, "in this case [OAN] really literally is paid Russian propaganda." would probably have made me believe she was stating a fact. About seven years ago I realized Maddow was a shameless liar and propagandist, and I stopped watching her show. I also stopped watching MSNBC entirely. My point is that I think the judge was mistaken when she ruled that Rachel Maddow's fans don't take what she says seriously. They shouldn't take her seriously, but many of them do.

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I used to listen to Rachel Maddow's show when she was on Air America, and I took her seriously. For quite a while. I quit watching all Air America shows shortly before they went out of business, as I was catching on to their DNC propaganda. I did check out the first episode or two of Rachel Maddow's show on MSNBC, just to see if she'd changed. She had. For the worse.

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She’s a nut case following orders from her boss...the CIA. The clips of her in full panic mode over the audits are worth a look if you need a laugh.

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Please tell me you've got a link.

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Here’s one...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESkR-1BNyI0

For more, search using DuckDuckGo

Rachel Maddow Panic Over Audits

Enjoy 😊

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Youtube tells me it's no longer available.

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Thanks! I couldn't really watch it though; she's intensely unlikeable.

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Ok, both sides lie like it's their job -- which it is. But what's the basis for judges to claim their sycophantic viewers don't believe their lies? Because if they're relying on the good sense of the viewers, that's a huge mistake.

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Both Carlson and Maddow are liars. Glenn, I wish you would also call out Carlson but then he wouldn't put you on his show. So how honest are you being with this?

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Not sure why you're just assuming that your views of Tucker are ones I share, and then making demands based on this assumption. You seem to have missed it but this article contains a discussion of Tucker's case. I've also expressed criticisms of Tucker to his face, including in 2017 when I interviewed him - https://medium.com/@ggreenwald/podcast-interview-with-tucker-carlson-5b812185be4a - and I was continually invited on, so maybe you shouldn't assume that your petty vindictiveness is shared by everyone. I've also criticized Fox while on Fox and it didn't prevent me from getting back on: https://www.mediaite.com/tv/glenn-greenwald-calls-out-the-disinformation-from-fox-news-on-fox-news/.

But beyond all that, just think about the gross illogic of your claim. You're alleging that I care so much about 5-minute cable hits that I'm willing to change my views or refrain from saying what I think in order to maintain them. If that were really true -- if that's how my motivation scheme functioned -- why didn't I just hop on board the Russiagate train in 2016 and spend all my time writing about how Trump is Orange Hitler so that I continued to get invited on CNN and MSNBC? If your accusation is true -- I say things or refrain from saying them in order to get access to cable news hits -- then my conduct would have been much, much different for many years.

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I am to the right of Attila the Hun, but I $upport Glenn Greenwald, not because of his politics (I know Greenwald is not a conservative), but because of his integrity and dedication to the truth.

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I'm a feral cat and I send GG dead rodents in the mail every month, even though he keeps dogs, because at least he is honest.

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Underrated commment. MOAR likes plz.

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I tried sending GG a mostly dead chipmunk last month, but the little bastard didn't want to stay in the envelope and the post office got all weird about the envelope moving around and stuff.

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Saved them scanning that piece of mail.

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DITTO that.

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Well said!

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Right. And he goes after the BIG issues. Not just the little BS issues where he can settle scores.

Dude you are like Glenn, a FUCKING CLOWN.

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Censorship of 50% of the population, media doing literal propaganda, politicians exploiting racial and identity politics to destroy the country aren't big issues to you?

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Big issues like Russian collusion hoax.

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Amazing how so many on this site think every man has his price. Has it ever occurred to anyone that perhaps there may just be a few principled people left on this earth? Glenn in my view is 100% committed to the truth as uncomfortable as that is for so many to fathom.

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I follow you because you're honest. I have heard Mr. Carlson repeatedly deny that he is a journalist; rather, he maintains that he is a commentator sharing his opinions. In that sense he is also honest. Ms. Maddow portrays herself as a purveyor of Revealed Truth. Her Fox counterpart is Sean Hannity, not Tucker Carlson.

I cannot tolerate more than a few minutes of either.

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Quite right. Tucker is in a different category than Hannity and Maddow.

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All this is is diversion,. distraction. Keeps us amused so we wont think.

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I can't stand Hannity and haven't watched FOX in a year but prior to that, I have heard him say on his show that he does commentary and not news. Pretty much anyone who has their own radio show/podcast is a opinion host to me.

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Agreed. As much as I dislike Hannity, I don't mind him because he at least admits that he's an opinion/commentary host and not doing journalism. Same with Tucker. I would even give Rachel Maddow a pass because she's not claiming to be a "journalist". My problem is with people like Don Lemon, Chris Cuomo and crazy lunatics on CNN who actually claim to be doing "objective journalism". There's a clip of CNN's board meetings video where it says "the most trusted news". LMFAO.

I am okay with someone being biased. I am not okay with them telling me they are unbiased while being a complete partisan hack. Don't piss on me and then tell me it's raining.

I haven't watched FOX in a year (except a few Tucker segments about Assange with Jimmy Dore) because I don't want to support any corporate news media. I have started to pay for independent creators like Glenn Greenwald, Jimmy Dore, Viva Frei & Robert Barnes, Steven Crowder, Matt Taibbi, Michael Tracey, Aaron Mate etc. With that said, I did find (before a year when I did watch FOX) that Bret Bair, Bill Hemmer, John Roberts, Martha Maccallum on FOX were during pretty middle of the political spectrum journalism. I would even say that it would be hard for me to know which party those 4 people support.

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That’s a simple way to think about it : opinions versus pretend objectivity. CNN is pernicious.

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Harris Faulkner probably hasn't called herself a Reporter, but she strikes me as being one of the fairer Commentators.

And, Hilton is one of the fairer/ honest Commentators, given his clearly-described conservatism.

Chris Matthews has had his fair moments, but has recently become mostly hard-Woke.

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Esp. in light of Glen's memories of him standing up to Fox, does anyone here recall any case in recent years, where a Wokester public figure was on any network, and where that figure was subjected to any tough questions other than from a Woke perspective?

Fox recently has had on Abrams and Clyburn, and threw all softball to them.

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Well articulated. I share your opinions.

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Me either

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The only thing I could ever criticize Glenn for is trying to have a logical discussion with people whose brains have been colonized by deliberately illogical cult thinking.

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I agree. He is a kind and patient man.

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Anyone that says that Glen Greenwald is dishonest has completely misunderstood the man’s work. He is the real deal.

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He takes a lot of flak for it too

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I believe they don't like the story so they are attacking the messenger. No misunderstandings, completely intentional.

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Attack the messenger. Does this book quote help?

“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.

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yes he is

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Orange Hitler. Made me spit my coffee! The country is gonna be so outta its collective minds they're gonna have to put "mother's little helper" in the public water supply to calm everyone down.

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Orange Hitler… doesn’t that make him a person of color?

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lol and a minority.

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Minoritiest minority! There's only 1 orange man.

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The bloviating Trump monster: his entire stick was to mock woke/intersectionality/anti-racism for it’s silly excess and illogic. The Rabble were so ready for that line, they had been saying the same things at the dinner table for years and then along came an erstwhile politician saying what they always thought.

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Yeah. The Trump-haters seem to try to top each other in bestowing on him the most outrageous metaphor.

It's hard to beat "Nazi", isn't it? So, the recipe becomes add a modifier: Orange Nazi, racist Nazi, Jew-hating Nazi, Nazi colluding with Russia, Nazi telling people to drink bleach...

A variant is to mix the adjectives with the best-known Nazi - Hitler, as in the example above.

One of their problems is, these are all re-runs. They've used 'em before. How many different kinds of Nazi was W?

Come on, y'all. Don't you progressives have more imagination than that?

Maybe not really.

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They should try the Shakespeare Insult Kit.

You choose some words from columns A, B, and C, and add "Thou" in front, to come up with cool insults like "Thou pribbling, fen-sucked, canker blossom..."

They'd be better than those boring old Nazi insults.

http://www.pangloss.com/seidel/shake_rule.html

There's also an automated one that does the work for you at

http://www.pangloss.com/seidel/Shaker/index.html?

That's how I got "Thou venomed fool-born devil-mon!"

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O illiterate loiterer! (lol)

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C'mon. W was Nazi Cowboy. They beat that Cowboy moniker to death.

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Nope, imagination depleted, fresh out of ideas, but lots of superiority over anyone who could support Trump.

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I got a taste of that earlier today -- see my comment just above.

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They do tend to run down the list and up another, until it wears thin to the point of boorishness.

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LOL 😆 Don’t give them any ideas.

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TDS broke many a brain. Otherwise reasonable people start spewing all sort of nonsense. Not that I claim Nate is reasonable.

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It seems to me that the mesmerizing of the liberal mind began with Obama and tipped into crisis with Trump.

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Yes, Obama pulled a heck of a con job.

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Obama was the stealth race hustler that we didn't see coming. Probably should have, but missed.

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Carlson doesn't seem the type to ban someone who criticizes him; in fact, I think just the opposite. He seems to enjoy debating those who disagree with him. Admittedly, I don't watch much TV, period. But have watched Carlson in the past. All this said, I often agree with Carlson's take, but sometimes he has engaged in what I perceive as conspiracy theory tripe.

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I have the same impression of Tucker Carlson. There are times when it seems clear he's being disingenuous or intellectually sloppy and tendentious, and I stop listening. His criticisms of Democrats, though, are usually reasonable and well-supported by evidence.

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As are most of his criticisms of Republicans. I watch little TV but try to watch both PBS News Hour and Tucker when at home, knowing the truth lies somewhere between them.

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Not a bad approach.

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The best part is that I’ll have imbibed a few prior to Tucker, so the indignant facial expressions are even more comical.

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I agree with you if Tucker could stay away from some of the hyperbola he could get into the same bandwidth as Glenn. Maddow is just silly, a true believer .

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Years ago, back around the time Glenn and Tucker became 'an item', I remember reading something from Glenn that really pissed me off. I wrote an excoriating post (possibly on the Intercept) and sent a copy to Tucker, suggesting he should re-consider 'sharing his air' with Glenn. I can't remember what the issue was. Over time, while I still listen to what Tucker has to say, I'm more interested in Glenn's work-product these days, primarily due to the hard-factual elements rigorously pursued, which are so widely lacking on-line in general. (Albeit, toss-offs like: 'Trump is Orange Hitler' are highly appreciated !;)

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Methinks Nate is a troll.

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You’re so brave Bert

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Stunning in fact

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I see what you did there.

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I guess anyone who expresses disagreement is a "troll." Sheesh

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It is all in how you express disagreement. Good people can disagree without being disagreeable.

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Trolling is just trying to get a rise out of people. You may not believe what you’re saying. The content is the means to an end.

Being disagreeable isn’t the same thing. In all honesty, more readers need to grow up and stop insisting everyone play nice. It’s stupid.

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I’m a Troll, it’s fun, I particularly like using Trump as a sounding board.

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He's giving you a taste of your own medicine. You called Tucker "racist". "DNC left" calls everyone else Russian agents. Anyone who expresses disagreement is a racist in your book.

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You should try to express yourself better and maybe examine yourself a little better if you really stand by what you said.

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The only difference is intent, sometimes it’s difficult to differentiate

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Me knowest.

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People attack our of emtional reactions of hysteria when there is no critical thinking or knowledge present. This is how we are destroying knowledge.

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Tribalism is a hella poor substitute for thinking.

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Ain't that the truth. An unfortunately tribalism seems to be growing more each year.

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Human beings like most other mammals are tribal and will continue to be. That's how we are. Until couple decades ago, we knew how to put aside tribal mindset and think objectively for a bit. I think things like instant gratification from social media, porn, uber, quick delivery, tinder etc has lost us the objective thinking because we don't want to put the hard effort required to think objectively and just want quick answers to everything and prefer the answers which confirm our biases.

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I am a cat. Felis cattus.

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Very well said.

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[Memo to Self: Don't fuck with Glenn]

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Yeah. Glenn really went after the tough guy didn’t he

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Good point, but GG is defending HIMSELF against accusations of personal corruption. Is that not proper? (I WOULD rather GG not waste his time here, but maybe he felt we were not refuting strongly enough.)

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But Glenn has this. He can get articles in several publications. Even if he personally likes tucker what is he gaining by reaching out to tucker’s audience. I think anyone that goes on one of those shows is tarnishing themselves a bit. Tucker and Rachel are the extremes that leave the most tarnish. I could understand if someone like Richard jewell would go on “tucker tonight” (better name) because he has no other way to defend himself. I don’t think Richard should go on now. I was thinking back in the day. But he could go on now if the topic was stopping delusion terrorists

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Not to mention, your life would be a lot easier if you parroted the MSM conventional wisdom.

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I respect your integrity on Russiagate and other issues. But Carlson has made many racist and other outrageous statements - for example on the pandemic and other things. Why are you silent on these, as I know you are an anti-racist? The article you cited was from 4 years ago when you still got on CNN sometimes.

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I watched Carlson as an alternate news source during the last 4 years because I didn't want to be bombarded by Trump hate. I'm sure many turned to Carlson, during the Trump years for the same reason. Instead of making comments like Carlson has made many racists statements why don't you play journalist and back it up with actual quotes from Tucker Carlson which substantiate your claims.

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It’s simply a matter of being white while speaking. No further evidence is needed

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