Matt Taibbi’s Commentary on the Tearing Down of Old Twitter and (Hopefully) its Rebirth

As I've expressed repeatedly on this site (but more often and with detailed substantiation on my website, Dangerous Intersection), I have no little respect for much of what passes as "journalism" at America's best known legacy media outlets. They have repeatedly preached to us and censored dissenting views on major stories instead of letting the facts fall where they may and inviting us to evaluate those facts on our own. That is why trust in major media is at an all time low: only 11% of us have a lot of confidence in our newspapers and television news. For years, Twitter has been the water cooler for those seeking to shape media narratives and jam them down our throat. That is changing and I am ever cognizant of the wailing and gnashing of teeth, along with the gaslighting, I am hearing from the increasingly disempowered "journalists" who have been the most active at censoring. I applaud the efforts of Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Michael Shellenberger and others who are now revealing the many ways in which Twitter has been falsely presenting itself as a forum for free speech.

Today, Matt Taibbi posted background on the ongoing Twitter revelations. I expect that many people will appreciate these revelations but will not comment publicly (though many will applaud these development privately to me, as they have been doing for several years on many contentious issues). I also expect that more than a few people will publicly respond to Taibbi's comments (and my own) with a creative barrage of ad hominem comments--that's exactly what people do when can can't make honest arguments. Every time I see this behavior, I recognize it as stark symptoms of Nietzschean ressentiment. Here is an excerpt from Taibbi's most recent article, "Note to Readers on the "Twitter Files"":

A lot has been made about the line about how I “had to agree to certain conditions” to work on the story. I wrote that assuming the meaning of that line would be obvious. It was obvious. Still, the language was just loose enough to give critics room to make mischief, and the stakes being what they are, they of course did. That’s on me, and a lesson going forward. For the record, the deal was access to the Twitter documents, but I had to publish on Twitter. I also agreed to an attribution (“Sources at Twitter”). That’s it.

Everyone involved with the project, including myself as well as Bari Weiss and Michael Shellenberger, has editorial control. We’ve been encouraged to look not just at historical Twitter, but the current iteration as well. I was told flat-out I could write anything I wanted, including anything about the current company and its new chief, Elon Musk. If anything, the degree of openness on that front freaked me out a little initially, being so far from any other experience I’ve had.

In our initial meeting, Musk talked about how he thought a “full confessional restores faith in the company,” and everything I’ve seen since seems to confirm he’s sincere about his desire for full open-kimono transparency with the public. He says we’re “welcome to look at things going forward, not just at the past,” and until I run into a reason to believe otherwise, I’m taking him at his word. I’d be crazy not to, considering the access we’ve already been given. This is a historic opportunity, and I think we’re all trying to treat that opportunity with the appropriate respect, which among other things means staying as focused as we can be on the documents, and trying to make as much sense of them as we can, as quickly as we can....

In this particular instance, the story has to come out on Twitter. There’s the obvious deep irony of using the familiar drip-drip-drip format and uncontrollable virulality of Twitter to roast Twitter itself. We’re also using an inherently destabilizing medium to expose efforts to turn Twitter into an authoritarian instrument of social control. There’s genius in this. Now I would feel wrong even thinking of doing it any other way.

This is especially the case since a major subtext of the Twitter Files project is what a burn it is on conventional/corporate media, whose minions tried for years to turn Twitter into a giant conformity machine, and cheered each new advance in censorship and opinion control. Those same people now have to watch in helplessness as one horrifying revelation after another spills out, guerrilla-style, into what was not long ago their private playground. This, too, couldn’t be scripted better. It’s like sending an intercontinental shit-missile screaming into the dais of the White House correspondents’ dinner at 15,000 m.p.h. If you can’t see the humor in this, you probably never had a sense of humor to begin with.

Continue ReadingMatt Taibbi’s Commentary on the Tearing Down of Old Twitter and (Hopefully) its Rebirth

Russian Spies Hiding Behind Every Tree

Truly, Russian Spies are EVERYWHERE!!!

I understand that many people have grown up reading and trusting NPR/MSNBC/NYT/WaPo, so their instinct is to keep reading and trusting. To be fair, there is still a lot of good information to be had in these places, but objective eyes will find huge swaths of fact-free insanity about Russia, including the apparent belief that every serious thinker who crosses Democrat Party Orthodoxy is a Russian spy or at least paid by the Russians. It's stunning that so many people paid to be "journalists" spout these claims in the absence of any facts. The ends apparently justify the means, however, so lies and censorship are deemed to be warranted to support one's team. These are very sad days for "journalism" in America.

Greenwald:

This is the mental illness with which liberal media outlets and liberal pundits have contaminated millions of American minds. They are trained to believe that, lurking everywhere, there are Americans with whom they disagree because they're paid and controlled by the Kremlin...All of these liberal journalists and pundits -- none of whom has ever broken a significant story, by the way -- know that a large percentage of their followers suffer from this mental illness of paranoia, believing that everyone with whom they disagree is a paid Kremlin spy.

Not a drop of proof is needed to make this false claim, even if you are paid to be a "journalist." Same problem with the "Russian Interference in the 2016 election." Do any of these cheerleaders for the Democrats care about the minimal extent of Facebook ads during that campaign?

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Trust in News Sources “at an All Time Low.”

Here is what Americans think of two of their main news sources, newspapers and television news:

This Country's Founders had a love/hate relationship with the newspapers, but I wonder whether so many Americans ever distrusted news providers as much as they do today. Here are a few excerpts from an article discussing the views of the Founders regarding the free press:

Founders spoke glowingly about the press as a pillar of democracy and guarantor of liberty. Thomas Jefferson, for instance, famously wrote in 1787 that "were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."

George Washington framed the issue of free expression in almost apocalyptic terms: "If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter."

Yet discussing the free press of their day, the Founders also could often sound like those who are decrying "fake news" in 2020.

Under a barrage of criticism from newspapers published by his political opponents, Washington painted journalists as "infamous scribblers." Benjamin Franklin, himself a very successful newspaper publisher, described the press of his time as a resentful, vicious institution comparable to the Spanish Inquisition.

Jefferson frequently condemned the press as passionately as he had advanced their right to publish freely. "I deplore ... the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed and the malignity, the vulgarity, and mendacious spirit of those who write for them," he wrote in 1814. "Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper," he complained in a letter to another friend.

One more quote about the free press, this one by James Madison:
To the press alone, checkered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.

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Eric Weinstein Schools Ben Collins on Cookie Cutter Talking Points Employed by Elitists Pretending to be Journalists

Eric Weinstein Points out a big problem for Ben Collins and others pretending to be journalists of Legacy Media Outlets:

Ben Collins protests too much:

Weinstein then inserts the dagger (click this image to let it scroll for the full effect):

Collins is such a joke, not a journalist.

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Illustrative Debate of Whether We Should Trust Mainstream Media.”

I have long enjoyed listening to Malcolm Gladwell's podcasts and reading his books. However, my respect for him fell precipitously after reading the words he spoke at the Recent Munk debate in Toronto [Munk Transcript] Tara Henley reports, in her article, "An astonishing Munk debate in Toronto, Matt Taibbi and Douglas Murray's landslide, Malcolm Gladwell and Michelle Goldberg's mendacity - and five reasons why trust in the mainstream media is so low":

At the beginning of the event, the crowd was split 48 percent to 52 percent in favour of the resolution. By night’s end, a full 67 percent agreed that the mainstream media should not be trusted and only 33 percent disagreed. This is a 39 percent vote gain.

So, what exactly happened here?

Let’s unpack the specific tendencies that Gladwell and Goldberg exhibited that I believe swayed the audience — that, in fact, show up regularly in the mainstream press.

The first of these tendencies is mendacity.

The public is not stupid, and people get it when arguments are made in bad faith....

The second tendency on display is self-absorption.

While both Taibbi and Murray focused their arguments on the impacts of media failures on society as a whole, it was telling that Malcolm Gladwell largely focused his arguments on himself....

The third tendency is a demonstration of ideological capture.

The fact that Malcolm Gladwell fell back on arguments around a lack of diversity in the press — on a stage occupied by Taibbi, a Black man, a gay man, and a woman — signaled allegiance to a particular political project....

The pervasiveness of this political ideology within the press corps is a problem, and something that I hear complaints from the public about constantly.

Continue ReadingIllustrative Debate of Whether We Should Trust Mainstream Media.”