Documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras said in an open letter published Thursday that she was fired from First Look Media for publicly criticizing how the company reacted to its failure to protect the identity of an anonymous source currently in jail is located.
The source, Reality Winner, was working as a linguist for the National Security Agency when she provided top-secret government documents to The Intercept, an investigative website run by First Look Media founded by Ms. Poitras and journalists Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill.
Ms. Winner was arrested on June 3, 2017, two days before The Intercept published an article based on material she posted under the heading “Top Secret NSA Report Details Russian Hacking Efforts Days Before the 2016 Election”. She was sentenced to more than five years in prison in 2018.
Betsy Reed, editor-in-chief of The Intercept, admitted to readers in a July 2017 notice that the publication had not done enough to protect Ms. Winner’s identity.
In the open letter, Ms. Poitras said the company had not responded with sufficient transparency about the aftermath of the story.
Ms. Poitras left The Intercept in 2016 but continued to work on film projects until she was released on November 30, advising for First Look Media. In an interview with the New York Times media, she accused the company of retaliation for criticizing the company from columnist Ben Smith.
In this interview, Ms. Poitras accused First Look Media’s investigation of failing to protect Ms. Winner and accused the company of “covering up and betraying core values”.
She returned to this criticism in the letter she published on Thursday on the website of her production company Praxis Films.
“Instead of conducting an honest, independent and transparent assessment with significant ramifications, First Look Media fired me for speaking out and exposing the gap between the organization’s supposed values and its practice,” she wrote.
Ms. Poitras added that the focus of her criticism was not that a source was exposed – “Journalists make mistakes, sometimes with dire consequences,” she wrote – but that research into the publication into handling the Winner story was inadequate .
First Look Media denied Ms. Poitras’ account, saying it refused to renew her contract because she was working on projects outside the company. It also defended its investigations.
“We did not renew the agreement with Laura Poitras on independent contractors because, despite our financial agreement, she has not worked for our company for more than two years,” First Look Media said in a statement. “This is simply not a sustainable situation for us or a company. For this and only for this reason, her contract was not renewed in 2021. Any implication that our decision was based on her speaking to the press is wrong. “
The Intercept was launched in 2014, with the help of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, after Ms. Poitras and Mr. Greenwald released blockbuster reports on National Security Agency secrets leaked by Edward J. Snowden. Her work won the Pulitzer Public Service Award, and Ms. Poitras won an Oscar for best documentary for Citizenfour, the 2014 film about Mr. Snowden.
Mr Greenwald left The Intercept in October claiming that an article he had written about Joseph R. Biden and his son Hunter had been censored by its editors, an allegation which the publication denied.
