The Intercept Stands By Its Reporting on Gab and the Riot Squad
Over the past several days, wild and unfounded accusations have been hurled at The Intercept. We publish corrections and clarifications when we get something wrong, but none of these attacks have any merit whatsoever. In the rancorous and dizzying world of social media, falsehoods are amplified and it is often difficult for well-intentioned readers to discern the truth. So we would like to take this opportunity to correct the record.
These attacks revolve around our reporting on an archive of data from Gab, a far-right social media website, and on the “Riot Squad,” a group of journalists whose viral clips of violence, at times deceptively edited, have been used to smear the Black Lives Matter movement. We are proud of this reporting, which in intent as well as execution bears no resemblance to the caricature being drawn on social media.
Our reporting on the Gab archive, which The Intercept and other news outlets obtained, has focused on what it reveals about public figures on the far right. As we have done with other data archives we have worked on in years past, including the Snowden archive from the National Security Agency and the Vaza Jato archive from Brazil, we published only what is newsworthy and in the public interest, and the only names we published were of public figures. (In one story, we erroneously reported that a prominent conservative’s Gab account was one of many with a weak password. The error was corrected.) Newsrooms commonly come into possession of archives that contain personal information about private individuals. We would never expose people because they hold views we dislike or even abhor. The notion that we have done so is simply false.
Our reporting on the Riot Squad consists of a meticulously researched video and article. The members of the Riot Squad — this is a name they use — are journalists whose influential clips of violence connected to Black Lives Matter protests have been regularly featured in right-wing media, including Fox News. Our reporting found several instances in which this footage was selectively edited to remove crucial context, in one case editing out footage of a man wielding a machete at protesters. Some of this deceptively edited footage was played by Donald Trump’s defense team during his second impeachment trial and by a Republican senator during a hearing. The charge that the purpose of our project was to identify the Riot Squad so that they could be harmed by antifa is absurd. The article and video make clear that these individuals are journalists and that the violence they have experienced from left-wing protesters is inexcusable. The Riot Squad journalists are very public about what they do; they appear regularly on outlets including Fox News, BlazeTV, Newsmax, OAN, and Infowars. They are well-known to activists already.
https://theintercept.com/2021/05/14/the-intercept-stands-by-its-reporting-on-gab-and-the-riot-squad/