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Type of site | News website |
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| Available in |
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| Revenue | $19 million (2023)[1] |
| URL | theintercept |
| Commercial | No |
| Launched | February 10, 2014; 12 years ago (2014-02-10) |
The Intercept is an Americanleft-wing[2][3][4] nonprofit news organization that publishes articles and podcasts online.The Intercept has published in English since its founding in 2014, and in Portuguese since the 2016 launch of the Brazilian edition. It has been noted for its pro-Palestinian coverage.[2][5]
Notable events in the organization's history include theJuan M. Thompson scandal, in which anIntercept reporter fabricated quotes and invented sources, and theReality Winner controversy, in whichThe Intercept's mishandling of anonymously submitted governmental materials exposed the military contractor as a source and led to her arrest.
The Intercept was founded by journalistsGlenn Greenwald,Jeremy Scahill, andLaura Poitras.[6] It was launched on February 10, 2014, byFirst Look Media with funding by billionaireeBay co-founderPierre Omidyar,[7][8] starting with $250 million in pledged funding.[9] The publication initially reported on documents released byEdward Snowden.[10] Co-founders Greenwald and Poitras left in 2020 amid public disagreements about the leadership and direction of the organization.[6]
In January 2023 it spun off from the First Look Institute as an independent nonprofit organization.[5] In February 2024,The Intercept laid off 16 staff members, one-third of its newsroom.[11][12] In April 2024, the outlet firedWilliam Arkin andKen Klippenstein resigned in protest.[13] Later that month,Semafor reported thatThe Intercept was running out of money "and facing its own bitter civil war, with multiple feuding factions battling for power and two star journalists trying to take control."[2]
In June 2024, the unionized staff ofThe Intercept made several demands to the group's board of directors, including "the immediate dismissal and termination of CEO Annie Chabel and Chief Strategy Officer Sumi Aggarwal, a commitment to restructure the business, and transparency about the board's recent discussions with prospective donors."[14] In July 2024, after unsuccessfully asking the organization's board of directors if they could take over the organization, Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim leftThe Intercept to found their own news website,Drop Site News.[15]
At launch, Omidyar pledged $250 million in funding.[9] The non-profit arm of First Look Media budgeted $26 million in both 2017 and 2018, according to public filings, much allocated toThe Intercept.[9] High-profile journalists were well compensated, with Greenwald being paid $500,000 in 2015.[9]
The Intercept was awarded a grant of $3.25 million fromSam Bankman-Fried, founder of the cryptocurrency exchangeFTX. It had only received $500,000 when Bankman-Fried went bankrupt; the shortfall in funding "will leaveThe Intercept with a significant hole in its budget," according to its editor-in-chief.[16]
Omidyar ceased financial support in 2022.[2] First Look Media offered a $14 million grant whenThe Intercept spun off. In 2023, the CEO discussed a financial pivot to small donors and major gifts. Donations doubled from $488,000 to $867,000 from 2022 to 2023, but failed to meet expenses.Semafor reported in April 2024 that the organization was losing $300,000 per month.[2] The organization led a fundraising campaign in April 2024 which resulted in 3,500 additional recurring donors.[17]
In August 2014, it was reported that U.S. military personnel had been banned from readingThe Intercept.[18][19][20][21]Erik Wemple, writing forThe Washington Post, noted the conspicuous refusal ofThe Intercept to use the term "targeted killings" to refer to the U.S. drone program, instead referring to the drone strikes as "assassinations." Wemple includedGlenn Greenwald's explanation that assassination is "the accurate term rather than theeuphemistic term that the government wants us to use"; Greenwald further noted that "anyone who is murdered deliberately away from a battlefield for political purposes is being assassinated".[22]TechCrunch referred to the story as clear evidence of "unabashed opposition to securityhawks".[23]
In February 2016,The Intercept won aNational Magazine Award for columns and commentary by the writerBarrett Brown, and it was a finalist in the public interest category for a series bySharon Lerner called the Teflon Toxin, which exposed howDuPont harmed the public and its workers with toxic chemicals.[24] In April 2016,The Intercept won the People's Voice award for best news website at the twentieth annualWebby Awards.[25] In May 2016,The Intercept won three awards at the New York Press Club Awards for Journalism. The site was awarded in the "special event reporting" category for its investigative reporting on the U.S. drone program, the "humor" category for a series of columns by the writer Barrett Brown, and the "documentary" category for a short film called, "The Surrender"—about the former U.S. intelligence analystStephen Jin-Woo Kim—produced byStephen Maing,Laura Poitras, and Peter Maass.[26] At the September 2016 Online News Awards,The Intercept won the University of Florida Award in Investigative Data Journalism for itsDrone Papers series, an investigation of secret documents detailing a covert U.S. military overseas assassination program.[27][28]
At the 2017 Online News Awards,The Intercept won two awards: the first for a feature story about the FBI's efforts to infiltrate theBundy family, and the second, an investigative data journalism award for "Trial and Terror", a project documenting the people prosecuted in the U.S. for terrorism since 9/11.[29] The same year,The Intercept won a Hillman Prize for Web Journalism for an investigative series byJamie Kalven exposing criminality within the Chicago Police Department.[30] The news organization also won a 2017 award for "Outstanding Feature Story" at the sixteenth annual Awards for Reporting on the Environment.[31] Judges of the environmental award praised author Sharon Lerner for her piece "The Strange Case of Tennie White", which they described as a "finely written and disturbing investigation of contamination and injustice near a chemical plant in Mississippi".[31]
In April 2024,Semafor reported that despite facing significant financial difficulties,The Intercept "is riding high among its readers for its aggressively pro-Palestinian coverage."[2] In July 2025,Prism reported that "The Intercept has published bold reporting on Israel’s occupation and genocide that seems conspicuously absent from other publications". It wrote thatThe Intercept's CEO Annie Chabel identified the organization's coverage of Israel and Palestine "as a principal reason behind the publication's inability to secure large donations from philanthropic foundations." Chabel said "specific funders have told her thatThe Intercept is 'biased on Israel-Palestine.'"[5]
The Intercept had hosted an archive of documents leaked by Snowden to Greenwald and Poitras. First Look deprecated the archive and laid off its associated research team in 2019, saying that their editorial priorities had changed and that they no longer reported from the archive. This marked the end ofThe Intercept's original vision of being a platform to report on the NSA disclosures.[32]Barrett Brown burned theNational Magazine Award he had received for hisIntercept column in protest of First Look's decision to offline the Snowden archives.[33]
| Intercepted with Jeremy Scahill | |
|---|---|
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| Genre | Talk |
| Cast and voices | |
| Hosted by | Jeremy Scahill |
| Publication | |
| Original release | January 25, 2017 |
| Provider | First Look Media |
| Related | |
| Website | theintercept |
Intercepted was a weeklypodcast hosted byinvestigative journalist Jeremy Scahill and produced byFirst Look Media.[34]Intercepted was launched on January 25, 2017. It regularly featuredThe Intercept editor and journalistGlenn Greenwald as well as senior correspondent, author, and journalistNaomi Klein. The editor-in-chief wasBetsy Reed. Music for the show was created and performed by DJ Spooky.[35] The last episode was July 3, 2024. It was replaced byThe Intercept Briefing.
The premiere episode, on January 25, 2017, "The Clock Strikes Thirteen, Donald Trump is President" featured an interview withSeymour Hersh, who criticizes the media's response to the allegedRussian hacking of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, calling the way the media went along with the story, "outrageous".[36]
Deconstructed is a podcast hosted byThe Intercept's Washington, D.C. bureau chiefRyan Grim. The show was previously hosted by British political journalist and broadcasterMehdi Hasan for its first two years, from 2018 to 2020. Grim took over as permanent host in October 2020 when Hasan began hosting a news broadcast forPeacock.[37]
In August 2016,The Intercept launched a Brazilian version,The Intercept Brasil. In June 2019,The Intercept Brasil releasedleaked Telegram messages exchanged between judgeSergio Moro, prosecutorDeltan Dallagnol and otherOperation Car Wash prosecutors.[38][39] In the wake of the reporting, the Brazilian government in January 2020 indicted Glenn Greenwald on cybercrimes charges in connection with his efforts to protect his sources, the legitimacy of PresidentJair Bolsonaro's election was called into question, and theSupreme Federal Court of Brazil in April–June 2021 annulled former PresidentLuiz Inácio Lula da Silva's 2018 conviction on corruption charges.[40][41]
In February 2016, the site appended lengthy corrections to five stories by reporter Juan M. Thompson and retracted a sixth, aboutCharleston church shooterDylann Roof, written over the previous year, focused on theAfrican-American community. Shortly afterward, a note from editor Betsy Reed indicated that Thompson had been fired recently after his editors discovered "a pattern of deception" in his reporting. According to Reed, he had "fabricated several quotes in his stories and created fake email accounts that he used to impersonate people, one of which was aGmail account in my name".[42]
Reed apologized to readers and to those misquoted. She noted that some of Thompson's work, most of it using public sources, was verifiable. Editors alerted any downstream users of the affected stories, and promised to take similar action if further fabrication came to light.[42]
Thompson suggested that the greater problem was racism in the media field. He had made up pseudonyms for some of his sources, whom he described as "poor black people who didn't want their names in the public given the situations" and would not have spoken with a reporter otherwise. "[T]he journalism that covers the experiences of poor black folk and the journalism others, such as you and First Look, are used to differs drastically", he argued. He also said he had felt a need to "exaggerate my personal shit in order to prove my worth" atThe Intercept given incidents of racial bias he said he had witnessed there. WhenGawker published his email, Reed said those allegations had not been in the version he sent her.[43]
He was fired byThe Intercept in early 2016 and, according to Reed, did not cooperate with the investigation into his actions.[44]
In early June 2017,The Intercept published a National Security Agency document that asserted that Russian intelligence had successfully hacked an American voter registration and poll software company and used information culled from it tophish state election officials. The document was mailed from a source inside the NSA, who did not reveal their identity toIntercept writers.[45] One hour after publication,Reality Winner, a 25-year-old NSA contract employee, was arrested by theFederal Bureau of Investigation and charged under theEspionage Act of 1917.[46] The article bolstered public suspicion thatRussia had interfered in the 2016 election.[citation needed] The document stated that Russian intelligence had attempted to crack the log-in information of the employees of a vendor providing voter registration software and databases for states to use with their election systems. It stated that the Russians were successful enough that they were able to email 122 election officials, by posing as employees of the vendor.[citation needed] According toDavid Folkenflik ofNational Public Radio, "[a]nIntercept reporter shared a photo of the papers with a source, a government contractor whom he trusted, seeking to validate it. The printout included a postmark of Augusta, Ga., andmicrodots, a kind of computerized fingerprint. The contractor told his bosses, who informed the FBI."[47] NSA quickly identified the leaker of the documents.[48]
Verifying the legitimacy of leaked documents is common journalism practice, as is protecting third parties who may be harmed incidentally by the leak being published. However, professional media outlets who receive documents or recordings from confidential sources do not, as a practice, share the unfiltered primary evidence with a federal agency for review or verification, as it is known that metadata and unique identifiers may be revealed that were not obvious to the journalist, and the source exposed.[49][50]
According to the FBI, the evidence chain led to the arrest of Winner, a young Air Force veteran who was working in Georgia for Pluribus International Corporation, an NSA contractor, when the document was mailed toThe Intercept.[51]The Intercept was criticized for unprofessional handling of the document and indifference to the source's safety.[52][53]
Following the arrest of Winner,The Intercept released a statement saying it had "no knowledge of the identity of the person who provided us with the document". Allegations from the FBI about Winner, it added, were "unproven assertions and speculation designed to serve the government's agenda and as such warrant skepticism".[54]
NSA whistleblowerJohn Kiriakou andGuantanamo Bay detention camp whistleblower Joseph Hickman both accused the same reporter accused of revealing Winner's identity, Matthew Cole, of playing a role in their exposure, which, in Kiriakou's case, led to his imprisonment.[55][56]
On July 11, 2017,The Intercept announced that its parent company, First Look Media, through its Press Freedom Defense Fund, would provide $50,000 in matching funds to Stand with Reality, a crowd-funding campaign to support Winner's legal defense, plus a separate grant to engage a second law firm to assist Winner's principal attorneys, Augusta-based Bell & Brigham. Additionally, editor-in-chief Betsy Reed said that "First Look's counsel Baruch Weiss of the firmArnold & Porter Kaye Scholer may support the defense efforts while continuing to represent First Look's interests."[57]
On August 23, 2018, at a federal court in Georgia, Winner was sentenced to the agreed-upon five years and three months in prison for violating theEspionage Act. Prosecutors said her sentence was the longest ever imposed in federal court for an unauthorized release of government information to the media.[58] Winner was held at theFederal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP)'sFederal Medical Center, Carswell inFort Worth, Texas, to receive treatment forbulimia and be close to her family.[58]
Laura Poitras, one of the founding editors ofThe Intercept, prompted by the Winner controversy, expressed her concerns about source protection and accountability atThe Intercept, and spoke to the press about them. Thereafter, she wrote thatThe Intercept chose to fire her "rather than to demote or seek the resignation of anyone responsible for the journalistic malpractice, cover-up, and retaliation".[59][60]
On October 29, 2020,Glenn Greenwald resigned fromThe Intercept, saying that he faced political censorship and contractual breaches from the editors, who he wrote had prevented publication of his "The Real Scandal: U.S. Media Uses Falsehoods to Defend Joe Biden From Hunter's Emails" article on coverage ofthe Hunter Biden laptop controversy; Greenwald pivoted toSubstack to publish it independently.[61] OnThe Joe Rogan Experience, Greenwald stated that he thinks his colleagues did not want to report anything negative aboutJoe Biden because they were desperate for Trump to lose.[62]The Intercept disputed Greenwald's accusations, writing, that he "believes that anyone who disagrees with him is corrupt, and anyone who presumes to edit his words is a censor", and toldThe Washington Post, "it is absolutely not true that Glenn Greenwald was asked to remove all sections critical of Joe Biden from his article. He was asked to support his claims and innuendo about corrupt actions by Joe Biden with evidence."[63][64] Greenwald published his email exchange withThe Intercept, which, he said, showed his article on Joe Biden was censored.[65]
The advent of a host of online news platforms—Breitbart News on the right and The Intercept on the left—have cut into mainstream news's audience, with their predictable right- and left-wing takes on politics.
Three years earlier, in an angry exchange with PT congresswoman Maria de Rosário, he told her that 'she was too ugly to rape', prompting Rosário to press criminal charges, and the left-wing publicationThe Intercept to describe Bolsonaro as 'the most misogynistic, hateful elected official in the democratic world'.
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