There was a time when the disclosure of a back channel for politically motivated censorship would have generated widespread acclaim and called for awards. This is not that time. Just ask Matt Taibbi.
Taibbi, of Substack, revealed the internal communications of Twitter employees and U.S. lawmakers surrounding the censorship of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020. Musk provided emails and other documents to Taibbi showing how Twitter had engaged in censorship prior to the 2020 presidential elections, including quashing the Post’s story.
No one is suggesting that the New York Post should receive a Pulitzer Prize for its long fight to prove the truth about the Hunter Biden laptop. But, despite an alliance of most of the media and political establishment arrayed against it, the Post fought censorship and unrelenting attacks to bring this massive influence peddling operation to light. (Of course, the New York Times and Washington Post can keep Pulitzer Prizes for reporting on debunked Russian collusion claims created and pushed by the Clinton campaign.) Now, Taibbi's analysis of thousands of documents involved in this fight has been met with the standard scorched earth campaign from liberal reporters and pundits.
The document dump confirmed what had long been suspected in how Biden and Democratic Party officials succeeded in getting Twitter to block the New York Post story and suspend those who even tried to retweet or link to the story before the election.
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I will not repeat the content of those emails on how Twitter "handled" demands from the Biden campaign and the DNC for censorship. Musk gave the material to Taibbi to synthesize the voluminous record. That is when the familiar media flash mob formed.
New York Times contributor Wajahat Ali was one of the first to torch Taibbi:
"Matt Taibbi…what sad, disgraceful downfall. I swear, kids, he did good work back in the day. Should be a cautionary tale for everyone. Selling your soul for the richest white nationalist on Earth. Well, he’ll eat well for the rest of his life I guess. But is it worth it?"
So Taibbi’s reported downfall as a writer is due to his role in disclosing a massive censorship system operated at the direction or behest of one political party and one political family. He is "disgraceful" because he is suggesting that the media and social media companies should not have censored a story on a multimillion-dollar influence peddling scheme run by the Biden family.
Taibbi is not alone in such disgrace, according to Ali. He has also attacked former New York Times writer Bari Weiss, including for her statement that she was tired of the pandemic as being somehow racist. ("It reflects America’s cruelty, right?…we have also had cruelty, White supremacy, misogyny. America says go ahead and die, but just don’t die on my lawn.")
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Of course, Ali may be right on what it takes today to be accepted as a journalist. Taibbi is now persona non grata as opposed to Ali, who is routinely invited to write for publications like the New York Times and the Daily Beast despite a litany of controversies. In one column, Ali suggested that White Republican voters would prefer to burn down their own homes than rent to a minority member and compared them to the al Qaeda terrorists on Flight 93. He then wrote off most of them as "lost. It’s going to be a long, ugly, violent death rattle of a death cult."
In today’s world, the New York Times bans Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., for his view on the use of the military to quell violent protests, but publishes Ali, who told people not to "waste your time reaching out to Trump voters as I did."
"Reaching out" apparently means calling them virulent racists storming an airplane cockpit. That is the model of real journalism and commentary, not some journalist detailing a politically driven censorship system on social media.
Most critics like MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan attacked Musk or Taibbi while omitting any discussion of the details in these documents. Hasan simply declared that the full transparency ordered by Musk is just one of those "nakedly and cynically right-wing narratives ... But sure, the laptop! The laptop! The laptop!"
There is a simple reason for this evasion and enmity. The media is too invested in the suppression of this story to now acknowledge that this was a scandal involving both massive influence peddling and massive censorship to cover it up.
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On the one-year anniversary of the Hunter Biden laptop story, I marveled at the success of the Biden family in making the scandal vanish before the 2020 election. It was analogized to Houdini making his 10,000-pound elephant Jennie disappear in his act. The Biden trick, however, occurred live before an audience of millions.
The key to the trick was involving the media in the original illusion. Both Twitter and these reporters became invested in the trick. It is like calling audience members to the stage to assist in the performance. Reporters have to insist that there was nothing to see or they have to admit to being part of the original deception. The Bidens were able to make this elephant of a scandal disappear because Twitter and the media wanted it to disappear.
Musk has now pulled away the cover and revealed the elephant. Rather than acknowledge the beast, the media is turning on those who made it visible.
The Bidens forced many liberal reporters and pundits to excuse the raw corruption of influence peddling. They are now getting the same figures to dismiss censorship. The alternative is simply too much to bear, let alone explain. After all, if it is still on the stage, it was there all along – and that can only be a "nakedly and cynically right-wing narrative."
As for Taibbi, it remains (as Ali said) "a cautionary tale for everyone." The message is clear: see the elephant at your own peril.
