The journalists who are targeted by the intercept were exceptional in their willingness to cover events and circumstances that other outlets would not.
The Intercept, a formerly respectable news outlet, released a video on Thursday that takes aim at journalists who covered Antifa violence, BLM protests and riots, and civil unrest during the summer of 2020 and into the winter.
Entitled "Meet the Riot Squad: Right-Wing Reporters Whose Viral Videos Are Used to Smear BLM," the video is a smear job itself, an effort to frame BLM rioters and Antifa militants as the good guys, and those who cover their mayhem as the the bad ones.
The journalists who are targeted by the intercept were exceptional in their willingness to cover events and circumstances that other outlets would not. Julio Rosas of Townhall, Jorge Ventura of Daily Caller, Drew Hernandez, Shelby Talcott of the Daily Caller, and others, were taking their independent lens to protests. This is not something that CNN, MSNBC, NPR, or The Intercept can claim to have done.
The video claims that Rosas took stories that would have been merely local, and brought national attention to them, as though this is both a problem and something other journalists don't do—meanwhile, this happens literally all the time, every day, at nearly every major outlet in the country. And it should. No one would have known about George Floyd's death in police custody were it not for journalists taking that local story and making it national, and the same could be said for countless other stories that cross the transom every single day.
The independent journalists who risked their own safety to tell the untold story were not interested in making sure that BLM and Antifa came off smelling like roses. Indeed, the spin that CNN's Oscar Jimenez's concept of the "fiery but mostly peaceful" riot was not one that would be found among the reporters lambasted by The Intercept.
The Intercept has an obvious problem with journalists who don't share their left-wing bias, and no one knows that better than Intercept founder Glenn Greenwald, who departed the outlet when he found that his journalistic integrity would be compromised if he had stayed.
Greenwald's anger at his former outlet was intense, as it should be. He said that The Intercept was doing a thing that the left is squarely against, which is attacking people of color, and to top it off, The Intercept staffers who concocted the story were "white male reporters here putting a target on their backs for the crime of reporting on Antifa riots." Greenwald notes that this is both disgusting and dangerous—and it is.
This is what so much "journalism" is now. They believe that the real menaces are individuals who have politics or ideology different than their liberal orthodoxies. So these reporters are now like criminals to them because they report for right-wing sites, thus this targeting.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald)
Slamming reporters for covering Antifa violence is something that Antifa condones, as well. Antifa has come after The Post Millennial's editor-at-large Andy Ngo multiple times, targeting his family, and sending him to the hospital with head injuries. Antifa has instructed reporters specifically not to cover their actions, and threatened those that do. Now, The Intercept is running cover for Antifa, a militant left-wing organization that sows chaos and mayhem across the US.
As someone who nearly died as a result of being beaten on the head for my video coverage of riots, I cannot overstate how much more you’re endangering these reporters in your hit piece. @spj_tweets & @pressfreedom need to condemn this anti-press freedom propaganda.
— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo)
The video says that Ventura and Rosas are "part of an informal club of right-wing reporters who roam from city to city feeding the conservative media's hunger for images of destruction and violence on the margins of left-wing protests." And the man who narrates that, Robert Mackey, should know all about left-wing protests. He has an author page at Occupy.com which staged left-wing protests and an occupation of Zuccotti Park in New York City's lower Manhattan.
So ?@RobertMackey? criticizes conservative journalist for biased coverage of protests. In the video he points out he’s covered protests including Occupy Wall Street. Here’s his author page on https://t.co/0iRdqnheB4 pic.twitter.com/cIqq4BO7yT
— David Marcus (@BlueBoxDave)
These independent journalists who worked overtime covering protests and riots that mainstream media would not touch with their 10-foot-left-wing-biased pole struck back at The Intercept.
Hi @TravisMannon and @RobertMackey
Your miserable attempt to cancel and smear us is BACKFIRING tremendously
Y’all getting ratio’d HARD in your @theintercept video ????????????????????????????????
— Drew Hernandez (@DrewHLive)
Shelby Talcott, who was arrested while covering protests and riots in Louisville, KY, said rightfully that The Intercept was doing what they accused her and her colleagues of doing.
The Intercept has fallen into the same trap as much of the mainstream media did: Ignoring the realities of what was happening on the ground last year. We reported fairly, both the good and the bad (as this “article” itself is forced to note) and the @DailyCaller did great work. https://t.co/r7JlxkwK8C
— Shelby Talcott (@ShelbyTalcott)
Greg Price of the Daily Caller brought facts into the equation, noting that the riots of 2020 were excessively expensive.
The riots last summer caused the most expensive property damage in insurance history and a US Crisis Monitor study found that 9/10 of them were linked to the BLM movement.
The soy boys at the Intercept are pissed journalists would dare report on that.
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— Greg Price (@greg_price11)
And the footage The Intercept used to level their accusations came from none other than the very journalists they were seeking to defame. With Antifa trying to bar journalists from covering their mayhem, and left-wing and mainstream outlets going along with that, there would be no footage at all, no reporting done, no truth, were it not for these intrepid reporters who did the work that was so needed to be done.
Tim Pool made that 100 percent clear.
i love how they actually say that most of the footage of Jan6th came from the Riot Squad while also claiming they are distorting things
Fucking scumbags https://t.co/s1QQkM8hf4
— Tim Pool (@Timcast)
The Intercept has made its position and its bias clear. For The Intercept, if reporting isn't being done to uphold a left-wing ideology, it's propaganda. The reporters targeted by The Intercept work hard to give a view into what outlets like The Intercept won't, and we should all be grateful to them for doing it.
Looks like the independent reporters are going to have the last word. They've taken the moniker "riot squad" and made it their own, while showing how absurd the notion really is.
With help from @theintercept, allow us to present:
The Riot Squad pic.twitter.com/hA1BNMIDp9
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller)
