First, only a miniscule fraction of the 550 articles and segments analyzed - about one percent - associated Rittenhouse with white supremacy, with just as many denying the claim. Second, there is virtually nothing here that would validate the claim that U.S. reporters actively misinformed viewers and readers on the white supremacy question - and certainly not in any egregiously obvious way.
So what gives? All one can do is speculate, absent direct evidence, but let's.
While it's been clear for quite some time, from its coverage before and during the Trump years, that Fox wants to spank the Left, DiMaggio's piece suggests the exposure of an agenda on Greenwald's part is also worth considering. For years, Greenwald has been regarded by some on the Left as a Speak Truth To Power oracle, and there are many instances where it's hard to argue otherwise, as he has often been out front in his criticism of executive excess, lying Congresspeople (arguably, low-hanging fruit), and ferocious rejection of the intelligence agencies narrative put out by the MSM regarding Russiagate. Greenwald never believed the officious narrative that amped up the authoritative assessments without reminding readers/listeners of the flimsy integrity of the sources, especially liars John Brennan and James Clapper, both of whom have gone on to enjoy no-doubt lucrative "second" careers as consultants to the MSM. (And, for the record, Russiagate still looks like an intel operation.)
Some people who have followed his journalism career, either as hound dogs or acolytes, will remember that one year out of law school Greenwald got himself in hot water with the Left for defending a boner fido white supremacist, Matthew Hale, a lawyer who had been rejected in his application for bar passage due to character flaws. Greenwald, ignoring the character accusations, noted that it was important to defend the Constitution and that making exceptions to freedom of expression, for instance, because of abhorrent outburst, was precedent-setting reactionary activity we would one day rue. He said to said to Nick Perrino on his So To Speak podcast in 2016,
I got involved in that defense and then saw that there were a lot of other attacks on the free speech rights of neo-Nazis, and White Supremacists and extremist anti-immigration groups where a lot of lawsuits were being brought against these groups and tended to bankrupt them; but more so, to set precedent that says that if somebody has sufficiently bad ideas, they can be held liable for the consequences of those ideas...And the Supreme Court ultimately, in Claiborne vs. NAACP, in a great opinion said that the First Amendment doesn't allow you to be held responsible for the consequences of your protected speech. And yet, they were waging war on that really critical free speech precedent by trying to apply it to the most hated people in society, which were neo-Nazis. And they realized that that's the tactic, right? That when governments and other bodies of power want to legitimate a certain power that people may feel uncomfortable with, they always target the most unpopular people - the easiest case to sort of let it go. And that's why if you want to defend those rights, you have to go to those places where people are expressing the worst and most unpopular views.
The Lesson here? as Greenwald would say: Don't be a f*cking reactionary. Think!
But some of his detractors, while admiring his motive for defending the horrid deplorables among us, also saw some corruption that they were uneasy with. In a Democratic Underground Forum comment on Greenwald, that includes links to back up what he says, longtime poster "Msanthrope," lays into Greenwald:
For me, Glenn Greenwald has always been an a**hole...Case in point: Glenn Greenwald made a choice to defend Matthew Hale in a series of civil lawsuits that Hale faced after he encouraged shooter Benjamin Smith to go on a two-state shooting rampage...If you don't know who Hale is, well, he's a pretty famous white supremacist who is currently serving 40 years for soliciting the murder of a federal judge who ruled against him in a trademark case. Who put him away? Patrick Fitzgerald. (Yes. And Mr. Greenwald got an FBI visit regarding the passing of coded messages by Hale while under SAMS restrictions.)
It goes on with links to support the horror of Greenwald defending a guy who, as head of the white supremacist organization now known as the Creativity Movement. Horror, sure, but it does not shake the foundation of Greenwald's motivation for defending Hale.
However, "Msanthrope," (a feminist?), makes a salient and more confronting point when she reminds the reader that Greenwald had been rebuked for secretly taping conversations during his Hale defense, and consequently denying the tapees of their Constitutional rights. In a case summary we find:
Defendants' counsel recorded telephone conversations with various third party witnesses, without disclosing to those witnesses that they were being recorded. Counsel and his tape-recorder were both in New York. The witnesses, at least some of them, called from Illinois. Plaintiff moved to compel disclosure of these tapes, arguing that this conduct was unethical and therefore vitiated any attorney work product privilege that may have attached to these recordings, and sought a protective order prohibiting any further recordings. The magistrate judge granted both motions".
This "unethical" behavior has some import with respect to Greenwald's later work with Assange (radical transparency) and Snowden (the government's secret eavesdropping, etc.).
Greenwald is a troubling presence for independent-minded readers trying to sort out what the f*ck is going on out there. Take his relationship with Assange. Greenwald has supported Assange Wikileaks from the start. In the So To Speak podcast cited above, Greenwald said,
I remember I wrote about WikiLeaks for the first time. It was, like, 2009, and this was before anybody even knew about WikiLeaks; it was before they did any of their big leaks. There was an article in the New York Times, and it said basically the US Army had declared this obscured group that nobody's ever heard of called WikiLeaks an enemy of the state. And so, I kind of thought to myself, "Well any group that's being declared an enemy of the state by the US government is probably one that deserves more attention and probably even more support."
This is the kind of "speaking Truth to Power" that Greenwald is renowned for.
He goes on to urge folks to pony up and financially support Wikileaks, specifically naming PayPal as a means to deliver donations. He writes,
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
