It is not exactly a conspiracy theory, unfortunately, that "elites" have the last say in political decisions[1]. Having said that and gleaning over past human history, I think the oligarchs or "elites" of our "dynasty" allowed us to enjoy more freedoms than we ever had before.
I also doubt that WarnerMedia or CNN has our best interests when "reporting the news". CNN lives off of sensationalism, and it appears to be a convenient tool for a set of oligarchs to persuade folk over a political topic.
Who are these oligarchs, you say? Rich people who abuse their wealth for lobbying on any matter.
1) https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...
Glenn Greenwald doesn’t “seem like” the adult in the room, he is. The corporate media meanwhile almost exclusively provides commentary on stories from news wires, and where they do break stories, have many times turned out to be false, politically motivated, and never retracted.
Chris Hedges spent years of his career in active conflict zones. Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate, Matt Taibbi — these guys have done tons of original investigative journalism. Your criticism doesn’t land.
Greenwald clearly was a real journalist, but also fairly overtly quit real journalism specifically over journalistic integrity standards (standards which, even prior to his departure, he had, somewhat unusually, left to others when founding a “gigantic news organization”, fairly overtly because while he at the time recognized their importance to journalism, they were not what interested him about it.)
I would never accuse Greenwald of being incapable of real journalism, only as having, after building a career in it, decided his calling is in building a personal brand in ideological commentary unconstrained by the norms of journalistic integrity.
I cannot imagine how you arrive at that conclusion.
He sacrificed his position and salary at the organization he founded because he was the one with integrity. He refused to have his anti-Biden article about the Hunter Biden laptop blocked by The Intercept's editor: https://nypost.com/2020/10/29/glenn-greenwald-quits-the-inte...
Which the New York Times 17 months later quietly comes out and admits was real https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/16/us/politics/hunter-biden-... "The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation"
What it sounds like to me -- is that you disagree with Greenwald's political positions so are attacking his integrity with no evidence.
I've also found myself disappointed by those two, even if they're not as bad as CNN/Fox or whatever. They're "independent journalists" as a profession, rather than journalists who happen to be independent.