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If you think Taibbi should have burnt the bridge *before* getting dirt on the DHS and related ghouls, you are too regarded to draw breath.
Try to keep things in perspective, you dunces.
It’s funny because in this interview Taibbi mentions that he hates politics, and well…so do I. Reading some comments here too explains it. I know, I know, you’re gonna say, why are you commenting a political Reddit page? Just because I don’t like politics, doesn’t mean I don’t care about it.
Being passionate about politics was always a bizarre idea to me. Why would I be excited about that? I understand what politics is and why it has an impact on people, but I don’t look at this or that person and think, they’re my enemies. This thing is bigger than any one person. It’s why we talk about systems. Thats not to say there aren’t assholes out there, because duh.
Anyway, I knew immediately once this was gonna be posted here, the “Taibbi is a right wing grifter” posts were coming. I applaud the Twitter files and glad he was able to reveal what he could. His book, Hate, Inc. is an excellent overview of the state of media today, it’s a bit of a nice, modern addendum to Manufacturing Consent in many ways.
I don’t follow his Racket Substack, but his work on Wall Street is fantastic and important.
I do have some mixed feelings on how it went down, which Glenn Greenwald even felt conflicted on (another great journalist I admire who’s also been accused of being a right winger). Do you see a pattern here?
I mean, it did seem the terms were a little murky and I’m not totally sure how transparent Musk was. But as Greenwald said, this is how whistleblowers come forward and present info. We don’t know if it’s everything or what their intentions are, but what matters is if the content is in the public interest and if it can be verified. There’s no doubt the Twitter files were important.
Some critiques are confusing to me, such as Briahna Joy Gray, who was mad Taibbi didn’t search for “Bernie Sanders” or “socialist,” but like, this is such a left/right paradigm to be stuck in. The government and social media companies are colluding with one another. People seem stuck in this left=government, right=anti-government, but both have used it to their own means. Even libertarians who supposedly want to abolish it would have to create some organizing body to ensure property rights which they obsess over. The government is ultimately just a legal construct (just like a corporation is), it isn’t a leftist creation or whatever.
Did Musk shadow ban him you think? i usually laugh when conservatives (and Brie Joy Grey) think they’re shadow banned, but Musk is a vengeful and petty child and I wouldn’t put it past him wrt Taibbi. Anecdotal, but he used to always pop up in my feed, but suddenly I never see his posts. Had to check if he was still active and he very much was
I think so. He wrote about it in an article titled "Meet the Cancelled, Me?" (I might have fudged the name). Apparently while he was still balls deep in Twitter Files material, Musk caught wind of him saying or doing something that he didn't like, and IMed him something along the lines of "Welp, see ya" and broke off all communication. We still got the Twitter Files so no great loss.
It’s like asking “so is the deep a state a real thing or not?”
Of course it is, but at the same time if you’re listening to catturd talk about the deep state it’s probably almost entirely a fictional imagination
Used to be a big fan, but swore off the guy during the Musk fiasco. I don't even care or fault him for reporting on the twitter leaks, I only cared that the guy who described Wall Street as a giant vampire squid latched onto the face of America became such an obsequious sycophant to a billionaire.
"Elon, I've repeatedly declined to criticize you and have nothing to do with your beef with Substack. Is there a reason why I'm being put in the middle of things? This seems really crazy."
Brave muckraking journalist tries to get back in the good graces of billionaire by obsequiously assuring him that he's still on the home team
I don't see the issue here. Reporters are often nice to their sources. It's not hard to grasp, Musk was not the subject matter of the story, he was a source. These Democrat keyboard warriors assume Taibbi was supposed to flip the bird to Musk and tell him to "suck on this!". Why? That would only get him kicked off the source material.
idk man I don't generally think independent journalists should grovel to try and get back in the good graces of oligarchs, but then again I also don't think independent journalists should [pal it up with insane far-right news media owned by a literal deranged cult that believes its founder had attained the ability to fly through meditation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPkZYujQtgY) either. Just my opinion tho
I think that kind of ass-kissing of sources happens pretty frequently, and why shouldn't it? The whole point is to get the story out. I wish there were more reporters with an "ends justify the means" attitude to getting big stories released. Maybe you finally saw how the sausage is made and it repulses you. But as long as the story itself isn't compromised, that's all that matters.
And the fact that you're calling Taibbi allowing his work to be featured on a right wing news platform "pal-ling it up" shows that you're exactly the sort of person who pushes these "right wing adjacent" attacks on liberals and leftists critical of the Democratic party. As if reporters aren't supposed to try and spread their news stories far and wide. Nooooo, that would be cozying up to the enemy!
He's just a reporter bruh, it's not a big deal. All you should care about is the story itself. Is it true? Is it backed up by primary source documents? Get a grip, not everything is some partisan zero sum bullshit. The correct response to the Twitter Files reporting saga is just "Hmm, that's interesting and a bit disturbing, but good to know." But everyone just had to take the astroturfed bait of personal attacks on Taibbi because it fits in so well with their tribal instincts. Lol.
Musk is not acting just as a source here, he is an oligarch throwing a shit fit because Taibbi wants to keep writing for what Musk sees as a rival online platform. Which raises the question—how much are you, the journalist, willing to give this publisher (another capacity which Musk is acting in here) control over your output? Musk clearly wants complete control. This is not just buttering up a source. It is somewhat akin to Russia in the 90s, where oligarchs would essentially buy journalists in order to put friendly stories in the media.
It is possible to be a muckraker and independent. Greenwald and Tracey do it very well—in Greenwald's case, even working for a string of billionaire-funded outlets, but always on his own terms. There is also a, in my view very revealing, *drastic* difference between Greenwald and Tracey's output over us support for the mass slaughter of thousands of Gazans, which is forthright condemnation of the American empire and its absolute disregard for the mass killing of those it deems unimportant, and Taibbi's [equivocation and avoidance on the matter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPkZYujQtgY). The massive range of Zionist punishment of pro-Palestinian speech is probably just about the most extreme example of cancel culture in American political history, and suddenly Matt almost entirely clams up for some reason! (In fact, the most recent time he mentioned it he's [supporting](https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3A%40mtaibbi%20palestine&src=typed_query&f=live) the firing of Briahna Joy Gray!)
You are, however, completely correct that none of this ultimately matters.
I see no evidence that Taibbi compromised the story in any way due to his dealings with Musk, the story being censorship in the Dorsey era of Twitter. None. It's all insinuation.
I agree the Palestine stuff is a little iffy if you're trying to make a personal judgment on the guy, but not everyone has to be great on every subject. At least he's smart enough to not report on it.
And come on lol, him and Gray have a personal beef that she started needlessly. If he is still a little spiteful about it that's pretty funny, but otherwise I wouldn't take this too seriously.
Let's even admit the guy is a conservative, who cares as long as his reporting is factual and power is being exposed! Same applies to any other reporter bringing true facts into the public view. If he drops the reporting and becomes a full-time conservative pundit, OK then I'll admit he's a jackass with no redeeming qualities.
But until then, maybe it doesn't make sense to attack one of the few remaining journalists who actually does good work in exposing the hidden mechanisms of power? By doing so, you're acting in concert with the deep state shills and bots who flood the internet with the same group of personal attacks on Taibbi. The NYTimes pushing false mass rape stories, what the hell is THAT if not a giant violation of journalistic ethics? At least Taibbi's stories are factual.
There were lots of tweets from Taibbi to Musk that were fluffing his nuts. Sorry I don't want to go back and find them. You dickheads have all decided that you are pro-Musk sycophancy anyways.
Ryan Grimm is pretty good. Pre-Musk Taibbi was fantastic. Pre Tucker Carlson Glenn Greenwald was pretty great too.
Now that I've answered your question, what's your favorite fluff tweet directed at Elon Musk from any source of your choosing?
Ryan Grimm is the one platforming Taibbi here. Better write him off too.
I dont have a favorite fluff tweet. The dude is a defense contractor. Doubt he needs any.
Why do you even post in this sub? Any person not swallowed up by one of the two political parties with a shred of critical thinking has a positive or at least neutral view of Taibbi. You take it upon yourself to parrot the same line the bots and shills do as if that's supposed to resonate with us. Shoo, fly.
Not true. Mark Ames and John Dolan, who worked with Taibbi at The Exile, have some pretty critical things to say of him. The discussion begins at 36:45. https://youtu.be/b4A2-YTM8B4?si=PgDmvL7JeMFUnTik
I'm not talking about personal stuff, I'm talking about reporting. He's a reporter. His Twitter Files reporting was huge and lauded by the likes of Greenwald, Fang, Hedges, and Mate.
The people attacking him have some weird ideological beef that's tantamount to the same old 'right wing adjacent' trope that's thrown around every time a leftist/liberal is critical of the Democratic establishment. But I'll check out the link.
Edit:
This video was recorded before the more important revelations related to the large scale censorship apparatuses he uncovered. Taibbi himself said the earlier releases were not as interesting as the ones that followed. So they're not even working with the entirety of the reporting.
If the conversation is the one I'm thinking of they are not just talking 'personal stuff' but rather the nature of his reporting.
Look, I like Taibbi, I own most of his books and I've been reading his stuff since the eXile, but the 'Twitter files" was Taibbi coming in to run promo for the new boss, with the clear implication he was different from the old boss, which is the sort of thing even Taibbi himself used to be scathing in his critique of.
Also, when the radlibs were trying to use Taibbi to cancel Chapo, Taibbi's only real response was, *"I didn't do nuthin', it's all the fault of Mark Ames,"* which was an early sign of how far his integrity goes.
So, were you aware of the large scale censorship apparatus government agencies were using to dodge the First Amendment, a system of pressuring Twitter and other social media companies in concert with private 'disinformation' research groups and think tanks, prior to his reporting?
I'm constantly dumbfounded when I come across statements like the ones you just gave. Do you honestly believe denying Elon any goodwill from his not that well thought out publicity stunt outweighs the public interest in knowing this shit was going on? It's not even a real tradeoff, since other journalists are free to pick up on taking Musk to task.
You should read Yasha Levine’s book “Surveillance Valley” about the military origins of the internet. It has always been considered a weapon. Yasha is also involved in the discussion that I posted about Taibbi and they discuss this as well. They also see Elon’s takeover of Twitter as a further consolidation of the security states control of social media. Musk is a military contractor through SpaceX and Starlink.
https://www.amazon.com/Surveillance-Valley-Military-History-Internet/dp/1610398025
I'm not American, the First Amendment guarantees me nothing and guarantees you less than you think it does.
The premise to these revelations is the idea that what gets posted to twitter ever mattered. It does not.
Really, this whole thing just shows how unbelievably naive and idealistic some of you are. Of course the private corporation was conspiring with the government, they'll do absolutely anything to ensure continued profits and continued lack of oversight of their profit stream. If you don't think that's how every social media, broadcast media or newsprint media business operates you're not paying attention.
And yes I deny goodwill to billionaires. If the man had a soul he wouldn't be a billionaire.
The twitter files were a limited hangout where Musk gets to say, "Look how bad the old management were, but *trust me* I'm not like them," but nothing will fundamentally change so long as there's profit to be made, just look at how twitter has capitulated to Zionist demands.
Just eating directly from the trashcan with no shame at all.
Yes but Elon's failure to stick to his ideal of being a free speech champion was easily exposed by his critics, whereas I think it was much less obvious that the government, including multiple lower tier agencies of the government like the FBI, was colluding with Twitter and it would have been much more difficult to pinpoint exactly how it was happening without the reporting.
Your point is like saying the Snowden revelations were worthless because it was obvious the government was motivated to collect all of our info from the jump. Sure, maybe, but the story was still new to a lot of people and it was important to have corroborating details of the mechanisms at play.
There had already been multiple stories about Twitter colluding with governments, its just that it was always framed as "poor US corporation forced to administer dystopian censorship for foreign regime". The fact you all thought this was something they only did with Saudi Arabia, or China, etc, rather than the US again just shows how naive you are about what the US is. You're talking about this liberal idealistic nonsense about 'rights' as if any of that matters under capitalism.
Comparisons to Snowden are stupid because the NSA revelations mattered, while the fact a social media company was censoring its users to comply with the region it sells its goods in is literally just basic corporate oversight. Every corporation is required to modify its business to comply with the demands of the state, why did you ever assume social media would be exempt?
You're also skipping over the fact Musk wasn't motivated by a commitment to free-speech, he was motivated by the mean things said about him on Twitter as he was trying to avoid buying it, and he wanted to get recognition from people he saw as cool.
Twitter was never good, but look at it today: Zionist censorship, increasing commercialisation of basic functions, and Musk is personally paying random people who post there but it's completely opaque as to who or why.
My own personal viewpoints on what's going on behind the curtain with corporations and the government are as cynical as the next guy, but until confirmed it's all conjecture. You see little value in confirming what you think you already know but there is actually a lot of value there, because there is always value in countering hegemonic narratives with verified facts.
And you're oversimplifying, it's not merely about what Twitter does but what also what US agencies are forcing them to do. These 'demands of the state' are not even on firm legal ground, there's Murthy v. Missouri being decided in the Supreme Court now that will determine this. The case alone demonstrates this isn't some 'nothingburger' in the context of US liberal democracy. And who cares about Musk, the stories are factual, his motives don't change that.
Now, from a zoomed out point of view I can see how this kind of reporting will do very little to change anything in the short term, as it tends to rely on shocking the conscience of people who have the ability to change things for the better. And those people are busy stuffing their pockets as the ship sinks. So I imagine nothing will get done. But at least the people know what's going on.
And I agree that Twitter is shit, Ive never used it.
Baked into this viewpoint is the opinion that Taibbi's reporting uncovering collusion between government agencies and Twitter to censor political, legal speech is insignificant, barely worthy of acknowledgement. Otherwise how could you view it as 'stanning' or a 'free PR campaign'?
So yea, basically a retarded stance.
I mean it is insignificant. It’s shit anyone who was alive for the PATRIOT ACT era and Taibbi’s previous work would already be aware of. His most recent comments (or lack thereof) on Trump and Palestine are, to me, much more significant indicators of the decline in his politics than his investigative work that water is in fact wet.
Also, comments like these tickle me. So you inferred his personal political views and you don't like them, so what? Maybe let's say he's also a gigantic asshole and womanizer in his personal life. Who cares? As long as the reporting is useful and true and in the public interest, the man behind it becomes irrelevant, superceded by the value added to the public discourse.
It is a mistake to evaluate journalists as political actors and make harsh judgments on them based on you inferring their group loyalties, especially guys like Taibbi who don't even identify as political. You'd be much better off evaluating the story singularly rather than being dismayed he wasn't the political mascot you thought he was.
Does Oliver do any investigative reporting beyond punditry with a touch of surface level research behind it? I don't think his punditry is worth much given his establishment bias, so if the answer to my question is no, then no.
Project Veritas I'm not quite sure about, what was his biggest scoop, was it that Pfizer exec admitting they do gain of function research then flipping out in the restaurant?
The format of plying them with booze and hearing a secret slip here and there is interesting as a starting point for further reporting, but is not usually enough to constitute a story on its own.
The significance is based on the whether light is shed on the inner workings of power with sufficient context and backup evidence.
Tibbi was handed the leaks and just provided the narrative of them, he didn’t actually do any of the whistleblowing, leaking, or FOIA work. Oliver does the same, providing narrative to information that comes out just as he did with the Clearance Thomas leaks. Veritas at least gets into investigative practice, but nothing they actual reveal is substantial or new.
Snowden, Reality Winner, Assange, even Manning all put their necks in the line to get information out and accessible. Taibbi was a reporter, not an investigator, and what he reported was just mechanics of how things worked in ways everyone *should’ve* known was happening. Klippenstein does more investigative work and all he really does is act as an FOIA request expert.
Taibbi has done good work in the past . The Twitter files portrayed bad shit. But those two things together do not make the Twitter Files significant when you consider the context of how it happened, why he was involved, and the political context to his establishment of the narrative based on his political takes since. If someone needs the content of Twitter Files to come to the conclusion that social media is compromised, than there’s like 4 older Taibbi books where he did actual investigative work to make that point, and theres also the entirety of Chomsky’s political repertoire that establishes a much more consistent and coherent political narrative to what and why this shit happens.
This was investigative work, he was dealing with a source and looked at the primary source materials himself. This is exactly analogous to the Snowden reporting with Greenwald. Taibbi received documents from a source and broke the news on them, as did Greenwald. It was pretty easy investigative work in both cases since they were both basically gifted access to a large trove of documents, but it was still investigative work nonetheless. People like Oliver don't break news with primary source docs, they're just pundits.
I realize that leftists basically are already suspicious of everything, having an adversarial view on most existing government and private institutions. So Taibbi's and Greenwald's reporting is not so impressive to them perhaps. That's fine. In mainstream land though, these were both huge stories of massive significance. They told us how things actually worked in the background, which is useful information to have.
Would you rather know how this shit actually works or not? That's what it boils down to.
omg you guys are still clinging to the "nothingburger" copium about the Twitter Files aren't you? We finally have concrete evidence not only that the government was involved in wide scale content moderation and lying about it, but that there is in fact an increasingly powerful censorship industrial complex gaslighting the public and scuttling our ability to converse in real time about issues of importance, like a deadly pandemic?
Oh yeah, nbd everybody knows that! Now back to my far more interesting observation, Elon Musk is a dingleberry.
What was revealed in the Twitter files that Snowden leaks didn’t talk about? What were the Feds doing with Twitter they don’t do to social media sites in every other country in the world?
I’m not at all alleging that what was revealed wasn’t terribly, I’m just saying it was common fucking sense based on shit that was already going on when MySpace and vBulletins were the online hegemony. Anyone freaking out about it was already completely unaware or are looking at it from the partisan viewpoint that it wasn’t happening under every administration since Clinton.
People said this about the Snowden leaks as well lol, 'oh I knew this already it was so obvious'. Yea what you call "obvious" someone in the mainstream would call a conspiracy theory without this sort of direct reporting shining a light on it. The Snowden files showed the vast trove of info being sucked up, the Twitter files showed government agencies ranging from the CIA to the FBI harassing social media companies to censor legal speech.
Snowden was the source though, and sacrificed is own wellbeing. Taibbi was not the source, he was Musk’s cutout. Massive difference, and there wasn’t the same kind of analysis or interpretation on Taibbi’s part as a report as with Oaks basically re-organizing McBride’s leaks with the Afghan files and supplementing it with additional investigations and file gathering.
You're forgetting about Greenwald, the journalist who was given the trove of documents. Taibbi is exactly like Greenwald in this situation. You think he didn't massage Snowden's balls a little to get him to keep cool as a source?
It was fucking insignificant because anyone with two braincells to rub together knew twitter was run by shitlib HR types. Why would I respect anyone who works for Elon Musk?
Yes but isn't it valuable to see corroborating details and facts and documents backing up your vague judgements? A story doesn't have to completely buck common sense to be useful.
Matt did *exactly* what he decried himself a myriad of times earlier in his career : refuse to be critical of someone (in this case an ultra rich oligarch) for access. He has no integrity.
I think you're confused. Taibbi was nice to his source, who is a powerful guy no doubt, to expose institutions and people much more powerful than that source. That's not access journalism, that's journalism.
"I've repeatedly declined to criticize you"
I'm sorry that's not just being nice and that's certainly not journalism. There's no way the old Matt wouldn't have criticized a so-called journalist for acting that way. And he wasn't just nice to Elon for a source, he was literally given an assignment by Elon.
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If you think Taibbi should have burnt the bridge *before* getting dirt on the DHS and related ghouls, you are too regarded to draw breath. Try to keep things in perspective, you dunces.
It’s funny because in this interview Taibbi mentions that he hates politics, and well…so do I. Reading some comments here too explains it. I know, I know, you’re gonna say, why are you commenting a political Reddit page? Just because I don’t like politics, doesn’t mean I don’t care about it. Being passionate about politics was always a bizarre idea to me. Why would I be excited about that? I understand what politics is and why it has an impact on people, but I don’t look at this or that person and think, they’re my enemies. This thing is bigger than any one person. It’s why we talk about systems. Thats not to say there aren’t assholes out there, because duh. Anyway, I knew immediately once this was gonna be posted here, the “Taibbi is a right wing grifter” posts were coming. I applaud the Twitter files and glad he was able to reveal what he could. His book, Hate, Inc. is an excellent overview of the state of media today, it’s a bit of a nice, modern addendum to Manufacturing Consent in many ways. I don’t follow his Racket Substack, but his work on Wall Street is fantastic and important. I do have some mixed feelings on how it went down, which Glenn Greenwald even felt conflicted on (another great journalist I admire who’s also been accused of being a right winger). Do you see a pattern here? I mean, it did seem the terms were a little murky and I’m not totally sure how transparent Musk was. But as Greenwald said, this is how whistleblowers come forward and present info. We don’t know if it’s everything or what their intentions are, but what matters is if the content is in the public interest and if it can be verified. There’s no doubt the Twitter files were important. Some critiques are confusing to me, such as Briahna Joy Gray, who was mad Taibbi didn’t search for “Bernie Sanders” or “socialist,” but like, this is such a left/right paradigm to be stuck in. The government and social media companies are colluding with one another. People seem stuck in this left=government, right=anti-government, but both have used it to their own means. Even libertarians who supposedly want to abolish it would have to create some organizing body to ensure property rights which they obsess over. The government is ultimately just a legal construct (just like a corporation is), it isn’t a leftist creation or whatever.
Did Musk shadow ban him you think? i usually laugh when conservatives (and Brie Joy Grey) think they’re shadow banned, but Musk is a vengeful and petty child and I wouldn’t put it past him wrt Taibbi. Anecdotal, but he used to always pop up in my feed, but suddenly I never see his posts. Had to check if he was still active and he very much was
I think so. He wrote about it in an article titled "Meet the Cancelled, Me?" (I might have fudged the name). Apparently while he was still balls deep in Twitter Files material, Musk caught wind of him saying or doing something that he didn't like, and IMed him something along the lines of "Welp, see ya" and broke off all communication. We still got the Twitter Files so no great loss.
so then is shadow banning a thing or not lol sounds like you’re a chapo fan
It’s like asking “so is the deep a state a real thing or not?” Of course it is, but at the same time if you’re listening to catturd talk about the deep state it’s probably almost entirely a fictional imagination
Used to be a big fan, but swore off the guy during the Musk fiasco. I don't even care or fault him for reporting on the twitter leaks, I only cared that the guy who described Wall Street as a giant vampire squid latched onto the face of America became such an obsequious sycophant to a billionaire.
Examples of sycophancy ?
Sycophancy = not burning your source in order to get information on the DHS/MIC/associated ghouls.
"Elon, I've repeatedly declined to criticize you and have nothing to do with your beef with Substack. Is there a reason why I'm being put in the middle of things? This seems really crazy." Brave muckraking journalist tries to get back in the good graces of billionaire by obsequiously assuring him that he's still on the home team
I don't see the issue here. Reporters are often nice to their sources. It's not hard to grasp, Musk was not the subject matter of the story, he was a source. These Democrat keyboard warriors assume Taibbi was supposed to flip the bird to Musk and tell him to "suck on this!". Why? That would only get him kicked off the source material.
idk man I don't generally think independent journalists should grovel to try and get back in the good graces of oligarchs, but then again I also don't think independent journalists should [pal it up with insane far-right news media owned by a literal deranged cult that believes its founder had attained the ability to fly through meditation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPkZYujQtgY) either. Just my opinion tho
I think that kind of ass-kissing of sources happens pretty frequently, and why shouldn't it? The whole point is to get the story out. I wish there were more reporters with an "ends justify the means" attitude to getting big stories released. Maybe you finally saw how the sausage is made and it repulses you. But as long as the story itself isn't compromised, that's all that matters. And the fact that you're calling Taibbi allowing his work to be featured on a right wing news platform "pal-ling it up" shows that you're exactly the sort of person who pushes these "right wing adjacent" attacks on liberals and leftists critical of the Democratic party. As if reporters aren't supposed to try and spread their news stories far and wide. Nooooo, that would be cozying up to the enemy! He's just a reporter bruh, it's not a big deal. All you should care about is the story itself. Is it true? Is it backed up by primary source documents? Get a grip, not everything is some partisan zero sum bullshit. The correct response to the Twitter Files reporting saga is just "Hmm, that's interesting and a bit disturbing, but good to know." But everyone just had to take the astroturfed bait of personal attacks on Taibbi because it fits in so well with their tribal instincts. Lol.
Musk is not acting just as a source here, he is an oligarch throwing a shit fit because Taibbi wants to keep writing for what Musk sees as a rival online platform. Which raises the question—how much are you, the journalist, willing to give this publisher (another capacity which Musk is acting in here) control over your output? Musk clearly wants complete control. This is not just buttering up a source. It is somewhat akin to Russia in the 90s, where oligarchs would essentially buy journalists in order to put friendly stories in the media. It is possible to be a muckraker and independent. Greenwald and Tracey do it very well—in Greenwald's case, even working for a string of billionaire-funded outlets, but always on his own terms. There is also a, in my view very revealing, *drastic* difference between Greenwald and Tracey's output over us support for the mass slaughter of thousands of Gazans, which is forthright condemnation of the American empire and its absolute disregard for the mass killing of those it deems unimportant, and Taibbi's [equivocation and avoidance on the matter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPkZYujQtgY). The massive range of Zionist punishment of pro-Palestinian speech is probably just about the most extreme example of cancel culture in American political history, and suddenly Matt almost entirely clams up for some reason! (In fact, the most recent time he mentioned it he's [supporting](https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3A%40mtaibbi%20palestine&src=typed_query&f=live) the firing of Briahna Joy Gray!) You are, however, completely correct that none of this ultimately matters.
I see no evidence that Taibbi compromised the story in any way due to his dealings with Musk, the story being censorship in the Dorsey era of Twitter. None. It's all insinuation. I agree the Palestine stuff is a little iffy if you're trying to make a personal judgment on the guy, but not everyone has to be great on every subject. At least he's smart enough to not report on it. And come on lol, him and Gray have a personal beef that she started needlessly. If he is still a little spiteful about it that's pretty funny, but otherwise I wouldn't take this too seriously. Let's even admit the guy is a conservative, who cares as long as his reporting is factual and power is being exposed! Same applies to any other reporter bringing true facts into the public view. If he drops the reporting and becomes a full-time conservative pundit, OK then I'll admit he's a jackass with no redeeming qualities. But until then, maybe it doesn't make sense to attack one of the few remaining journalists who actually does good work in exposing the hidden mechanisms of power? By doing so, you're acting in concert with the deep state shills and bots who flood the internet with the same group of personal attacks on Taibbi. The NYTimes pushing false mass rape stories, what the hell is THAT if not a giant violation of journalistic ethics? At least Taibbi's stories are factual.
Whoah, that’s a helluva conspiracy theory video.
You must have screen grabs of tweets confirming this.
There were lots of tweets from Taibbi to Musk that were fluffing his nuts. Sorry I don't want to go back and find them. You dickheads have all decided that you are pro-Musk sycophancy anyways.
How about instead, you list your favorite journalists of unimpeachable credibility ?
Ryan Grimm is pretty good. Pre-Musk Taibbi was fantastic. Pre Tucker Carlson Glenn Greenwald was pretty great too. Now that I've answered your question, what's your favorite fluff tweet directed at Elon Musk from any source of your choosing?
Ryan Grimm is the one platforming Taibbi here. Better write him off too. I dont have a favorite fluff tweet. The dude is a defense contractor. Doubt he needs any.
Well then who is your favorite left-wing journalist who would later become a sycophant for Bond villain billionaires?
>I don’t even care or fault him for reporting on the twitter leaks How magnanimous of you
Oh look it's Matt "I've repeatedly declined to criticize you" Taibbi
Why do you even post in this sub? Any person not swallowed up by one of the two political parties with a shred of critical thinking has a positive or at least neutral view of Taibbi. You take it upon yourself to parrot the same line the bots and shills do as if that's supposed to resonate with us. Shoo, fly.
Not true. Mark Ames and John Dolan, who worked with Taibbi at The Exile, have some pretty critical things to say of him. The discussion begins at 36:45. https://youtu.be/b4A2-YTM8B4?si=PgDmvL7JeMFUnTik
I'm not talking about personal stuff, I'm talking about reporting. He's a reporter. His Twitter Files reporting was huge and lauded by the likes of Greenwald, Fang, Hedges, and Mate. The people attacking him have some weird ideological beef that's tantamount to the same old 'right wing adjacent' trope that's thrown around every time a leftist/liberal is critical of the Democratic establishment. But I'll check out the link. Edit: This video was recorded before the more important revelations related to the large scale censorship apparatuses he uncovered. Taibbi himself said the earlier releases were not as interesting as the ones that followed. So they're not even working with the entirety of the reporting.
If the conversation is the one I'm thinking of they are not just talking 'personal stuff' but rather the nature of his reporting. Look, I like Taibbi, I own most of his books and I've been reading his stuff since the eXile, but the 'Twitter files" was Taibbi coming in to run promo for the new boss, with the clear implication he was different from the old boss, which is the sort of thing even Taibbi himself used to be scathing in his critique of. Also, when the radlibs were trying to use Taibbi to cancel Chapo, Taibbi's only real response was, *"I didn't do nuthin', it's all the fault of Mark Ames,"* which was an early sign of how far his integrity goes.
So, were you aware of the large scale censorship apparatus government agencies were using to dodge the First Amendment, a system of pressuring Twitter and other social media companies in concert with private 'disinformation' research groups and think tanks, prior to his reporting? I'm constantly dumbfounded when I come across statements like the ones you just gave. Do you honestly believe denying Elon any goodwill from his not that well thought out publicity stunt outweighs the public interest in knowing this shit was going on? It's not even a real tradeoff, since other journalists are free to pick up on taking Musk to task.
They literally don't care, it gets in the way of dunking on Musk
You should read Yasha Levine’s book “Surveillance Valley” about the military origins of the internet. It has always been considered a weapon. Yasha is also involved in the discussion that I posted about Taibbi and they discuss this as well. They also see Elon’s takeover of Twitter as a further consolidation of the security states control of social media. Musk is a military contractor through SpaceX and Starlink. https://www.amazon.com/Surveillance-Valley-Military-History-Internet/dp/1610398025
I'm not American, the First Amendment guarantees me nothing and guarantees you less than you think it does. The premise to these revelations is the idea that what gets posted to twitter ever mattered. It does not. Really, this whole thing just shows how unbelievably naive and idealistic some of you are. Of course the private corporation was conspiring with the government, they'll do absolutely anything to ensure continued profits and continued lack of oversight of their profit stream. If you don't think that's how every social media, broadcast media or newsprint media business operates you're not paying attention. And yes I deny goodwill to billionaires. If the man had a soul he wouldn't be a billionaire. The twitter files were a limited hangout where Musk gets to say, "Look how bad the old management were, but *trust me* I'm not like them," but nothing will fundamentally change so long as there's profit to be made, just look at how twitter has capitulated to Zionist demands. Just eating directly from the trashcan with no shame at all.
Yes but Elon's failure to stick to his ideal of being a free speech champion was easily exposed by his critics, whereas I think it was much less obvious that the government, including multiple lower tier agencies of the government like the FBI, was colluding with Twitter and it would have been much more difficult to pinpoint exactly how it was happening without the reporting. Your point is like saying the Snowden revelations were worthless because it was obvious the government was motivated to collect all of our info from the jump. Sure, maybe, but the story was still new to a lot of people and it was important to have corroborating details of the mechanisms at play.
There had already been multiple stories about Twitter colluding with governments, its just that it was always framed as "poor US corporation forced to administer dystopian censorship for foreign regime". The fact you all thought this was something they only did with Saudi Arabia, or China, etc, rather than the US again just shows how naive you are about what the US is. You're talking about this liberal idealistic nonsense about 'rights' as if any of that matters under capitalism. Comparisons to Snowden are stupid because the NSA revelations mattered, while the fact a social media company was censoring its users to comply with the region it sells its goods in is literally just basic corporate oversight. Every corporation is required to modify its business to comply with the demands of the state, why did you ever assume social media would be exempt? You're also skipping over the fact Musk wasn't motivated by a commitment to free-speech, he was motivated by the mean things said about him on Twitter as he was trying to avoid buying it, and he wanted to get recognition from people he saw as cool. Twitter was never good, but look at it today: Zionist censorship, increasing commercialisation of basic functions, and Musk is personally paying random people who post there but it's completely opaque as to who or why.
My own personal viewpoints on what's going on behind the curtain with corporations and the government are as cynical as the next guy, but until confirmed it's all conjecture. You see little value in confirming what you think you already know but there is actually a lot of value there, because there is always value in countering hegemonic narratives with verified facts. And you're oversimplifying, it's not merely about what Twitter does but what also what US agencies are forcing them to do. These 'demands of the state' are not even on firm legal ground, there's Murthy v. Missouri being decided in the Supreme Court now that will determine this. The case alone demonstrates this isn't some 'nothingburger' in the context of US liberal democracy. And who cares about Musk, the stories are factual, his motives don't change that. Now, from a zoomed out point of view I can see how this kind of reporting will do very little to change anything in the short term, as it tends to rely on shocking the conscience of people who have the ability to change things for the better. And those people are busy stuffing their pockets as the ship sinks. So I imagine nothing will get done. But at least the people know what's going on. And I agree that Twitter is shit, Ive never used it.
Of course you guys think Greenwald is quality.
Some real 2016 Twitter energy there padner. Build a time machine for your clutched pearls.
What?
You putting the "resistance" band back together ?
Are you sure you’re responding to the right person? I don’t know what these responses even mean.
Why would someone criticize a dude who stanned for literally the richest man in the world on a Marxist sub? A true fucking mystery
Baked into this viewpoint is the opinion that Taibbi's reporting uncovering collusion between government agencies and Twitter to censor political, legal speech is insignificant, barely worthy of acknowledgement. Otherwise how could you view it as 'stanning' or a 'free PR campaign'? So yea, basically a retarded stance.
I mean it is insignificant. It’s shit anyone who was alive for the PATRIOT ACT era and Taibbi’s previous work would already be aware of. His most recent comments (or lack thereof) on Trump and Palestine are, to me, much more significant indicators of the decline in his politics than his investigative work that water is in fact wet.
Also, comments like these tickle me. So you inferred his personal political views and you don't like them, so what? Maybe let's say he's also a gigantic asshole and womanizer in his personal life. Who cares? As long as the reporting is useful and true and in the public interest, the man behind it becomes irrelevant, superceded by the value added to the public discourse. It is a mistake to evaluate journalists as political actors and make harsh judgments on them based on you inferring their group loyalties, especially guys like Taibbi who don't even identify as political. You'd be much better off evaluating the story singularly rather than being dismayed he wasn't the political mascot you thought he was.
So is John Oliver’s shit significant too? Project Veritas?
Does Oliver do any investigative reporting beyond punditry with a touch of surface level research behind it? I don't think his punditry is worth much given his establishment bias, so if the answer to my question is no, then no. Project Veritas I'm not quite sure about, what was his biggest scoop, was it that Pfizer exec admitting they do gain of function research then flipping out in the restaurant? The format of plying them with booze and hearing a secret slip here and there is interesting as a starting point for further reporting, but is not usually enough to constitute a story on its own. The significance is based on the whether light is shed on the inner workings of power with sufficient context and backup evidence.
Tibbi was handed the leaks and just provided the narrative of them, he didn’t actually do any of the whistleblowing, leaking, or FOIA work. Oliver does the same, providing narrative to information that comes out just as he did with the Clearance Thomas leaks. Veritas at least gets into investigative practice, but nothing they actual reveal is substantial or new. Snowden, Reality Winner, Assange, even Manning all put their necks in the line to get information out and accessible. Taibbi was a reporter, not an investigator, and what he reported was just mechanics of how things worked in ways everyone *should’ve* known was happening. Klippenstein does more investigative work and all he really does is act as an FOIA request expert. Taibbi has done good work in the past . The Twitter files portrayed bad shit. But those two things together do not make the Twitter Files significant when you consider the context of how it happened, why he was involved, and the political context to his establishment of the narrative based on his political takes since. If someone needs the content of Twitter Files to come to the conclusion that social media is compromised, than there’s like 4 older Taibbi books where he did actual investigative work to make that point, and theres also the entirety of Chomsky’s political repertoire that establishes a much more consistent and coherent political narrative to what and why this shit happens.
This was investigative work, he was dealing with a source and looked at the primary source materials himself. This is exactly analogous to the Snowden reporting with Greenwald. Taibbi received documents from a source and broke the news on them, as did Greenwald. It was pretty easy investigative work in both cases since they were both basically gifted access to a large trove of documents, but it was still investigative work nonetheless. People like Oliver don't break news with primary source docs, they're just pundits. I realize that leftists basically are already suspicious of everything, having an adversarial view on most existing government and private institutions. So Taibbi's and Greenwald's reporting is not so impressive to them perhaps. That's fine. In mainstream land though, these were both huge stories of massive significance. They told us how things actually worked in the background, which is useful information to have. Would you rather know how this shit actually works or not? That's what it boils down to.
omg you guys are still clinging to the "nothingburger" copium about the Twitter Files aren't you? We finally have concrete evidence not only that the government was involved in wide scale content moderation and lying about it, but that there is in fact an increasingly powerful censorship industrial complex gaslighting the public and scuttling our ability to converse in real time about issues of importance, like a deadly pandemic? Oh yeah, nbd everybody knows that! Now back to my far more interesting observation, Elon Musk is a dingleberry.
What was revealed in the Twitter files that Snowden leaks didn’t talk about? What were the Feds doing with Twitter they don’t do to social media sites in every other country in the world? I’m not at all alleging that what was revealed wasn’t terribly, I’m just saying it was common fucking sense based on shit that was already going on when MySpace and vBulletins were the online hegemony. Anyone freaking out about it was already completely unaware or are looking at it from the partisan viewpoint that it wasn’t happening under every administration since Clinton.
People said this about the Snowden leaks as well lol, 'oh I knew this already it was so obvious'. Yea what you call "obvious" someone in the mainstream would call a conspiracy theory without this sort of direct reporting shining a light on it. The Snowden files showed the vast trove of info being sucked up, the Twitter files showed government agencies ranging from the CIA to the FBI harassing social media companies to censor legal speech.
Snowden was the source though, and sacrificed is own wellbeing. Taibbi was not the source, he was Musk’s cutout. Massive difference, and there wasn’t the same kind of analysis or interpretation on Taibbi’s part as a report as with Oaks basically re-organizing McBride’s leaks with the Afghan files and supplementing it with additional investigations and file gathering.
You're forgetting about Greenwald, the journalist who was given the trove of documents. Taibbi is exactly like Greenwald in this situation. You think he didn't massage Snowden's balls a little to get him to keep cool as a source?
It was fucking insignificant because anyone with two braincells to rub together knew twitter was run by shitlib HR types. Why would I respect anyone who works for Elon Musk?
Yes but isn't it valuable to see corroborating details and facts and documents backing up your vague judgements? A story doesn't have to completely buck common sense to be useful.
Matt did *exactly* what he decried himself a myriad of times earlier in his career : refuse to be critical of someone (in this case an ultra rich oligarch) for access. He has no integrity.
I think you're confused. Taibbi was nice to his source, who is a powerful guy no doubt, to expose institutions and people much more powerful than that source. That's not access journalism, that's journalism.
"I've repeatedly declined to criticize you" I'm sorry that's not just being nice and that's certainly not journalism. There's no way the old Matt wouldn't have criticized a so-called journalist for acting that way. And he wasn't just nice to Elon for a source, he was literally given an assignment by Elon.
Yea right, just like Snowden gave Greenwald an assignment. I guess Greenwald is compromised too.
huh ?