As usual Barkan, you're about an eighth right here. I really enjoy your writing, and read a decent bit of it — and you're one of the few of the new (so-called) progressive wing that has some critical writing and thinking skills — but you can be incredibly myopic.
You say that Taibbi doesn't do any in-depth reporting anymore, and then you mention stories that are important to you that he doesn't cover (and it should be noted that they're mostly the stories important to the hall monitor, post-journalist types clogging Twitter's arteries). This reminds me of Nathan J. Robinson, the densest man on Earth, discussing Jesse Singal's reporting on gender issues with Glenn Greenwald and Briahna Joy Gray, and saying that Jesse's work isn't valid, or is even right-wing/reactionary, because it doesn't cover the story from the only angle that Robinson has deigned to be the acceptable one. Why does everyone think that all reporters need to be on the same beat all the time these days (and even seeing every issue the same way)? Shouldn't it be just the opposite?
In the last year or two, Taibbi has done long-form, deeply-reported pieces on the FBI's transformation into a domestic spying agency, the truth about the elections in Loudon County (maybe the only good reporting on that subject), deep dives into Justice Department abuses, the stablecoin/crypto crash, that Activision lawsuit, and tons more. Add to that a constant stream of smaller pieces about tech and financial weirdness, online censorship, civil liberties violations, abuses of power by both parties, and it's a strong body of recent work by any metric. He's also working on a book about profiteering during Covid and his Hate, Inc., serialized first on his Substack, is probably the best recent book about the media.
The problem is that people either don't read, ignore, or dismiss the stories Taibbi covers as "not important." Did Musk force Taibbi to release the Twitter Files on Twitter? Probably. Is it a publicity stunt for Musk, Taibbi, and Bari Weiss? Absolutely. It is a better way to get people to notice the story than quietly putting it on Taibbi's Substack? Almost definitely. I'm a long-term Taibbi subscriber (and also a liberal/lefty type and I think Taibbi is that too, although his politics don't matter as much as his quality to me), and it's always astounding to me when Taibbi puts out a long piece of great reporting about an important current event that nobody else has covered, and there are zero mentions of it anywhere.
If Taibbi had quietly released a long-form piece of writing on the Twitter imbroglio on his Substack, his thousands of subscribers would love it, and it would be otherwise ignored. Yes, Musk is hyping this up like a wrestling event, and guess what? It's working. People are talking about it, and they're forced to cover it. It's forcing the government to ramp up their censorious threats against Musk, which is making it an even bigger story.
I am eager for Taibbi's inevitable multi-part series, or book, on the Twitter Files, that those of us with a taste for original reporting and good writing can digest while the rest of the world ignores it, but until then: I hope Matt gives 'em hell.
Very thoughtful piece Ross. I found this article through a link in Andrew Sullivan's Substack. I've been reading Matt Taibbi for the past year or so, and he's done some great work. In fact, I think he's done some of the most in-depth, important reporting I've read: the kind of reporting we need much more of.
But I agree with you about The Twitter Files. I was disappointed to see he let Musk dictate the terms of how they were published. Reading that in his newsletter last week just gave me an uneasy feeling about the whole thing. It seems to go against everything an independent journalist should do. I don't like the idea of anyone dictating where a journalist has to publish something, no matter who the source is.
I also agree it was very difficult to read the files in Twitter posts rather than a more traditional article. I also don't think they really revealed anything we didn't already know through the previous work of Taibbi and others. Again, Taibbi is an important voice, but my trust has been somewhat weakend. Thanks for an insightful analysis! I look forward to reading more of your writing.
I have a Twitter account which I very rarely log into. Generally I don't like much and avoid social media. But I may now check my Twitter account (it it still works) to read Taibbi's piece (or pieces, or tweets). I like and admire his reportage. I don't have the problem Barkan has with Taibbi's choice to publish on Twitter to satisfy Musk; maybe I need to think about it more. The most important thing is to get the info out. It is too bad Musk apparently put a restriction on how Taibbi did this for the deal Musk offered him, but, as Barkan said (wrote), more or less, these are the realities of power. The rationale in this case is was it more important and useful to defy power or to report the story. For me, at present, it's the latter.
Ross, how many times does Matt Taibbi have to praise Matt Walsh, a Christian nationalist who led a harassment campaign against children's hospitals that resulted in bomb threats, for you to agree with the analysis that Taibbi is indeed a "hand maiden for the hard right" ?
In a healthy society with a healthy journalism profession, the NYT, WaPo, NBC and others would be deploying huge numbers of their reporters to track down Ned, Parang and Yoel and dig, dig, dig to highlight the enormous damage done to civic society.
I read your comments with great interest and feel that you made some valid points. That said, I'm a firm believer that in many opinion pieces there is often times a "slip of the tongue" that exposes the real issue. I this instance it was your reporting that MT's Substack site is now generating a $1,000,000 a year in revenue (which is almost 10x the salary a typical reporter is paid). Clearly the vitriol surrounding Matt's efforts are grounded in good old fashioned jealousy.
What I don’t get is: why does Taibbi think he is opposing power? I thought everyone already knew that Twitter erroneously took down the Hunter Biden story? I read Taibbi’s thread and it was obvious that this whole thing is just another marketing scam on behalf of one side in an intra-elite conflict.
Agree with your observations. He would likely have been better off had he listened to your advice. That said - I hope he does pivot a bit to the type of reporting that he used to produce..... it bothers me greatly to see that sniping and shade from other reporters. It borders on the silly and petty and doesn't add anything to the conversation.
I also would say I have problems with how these Twitter files story is being dropped. Especially with Bari Weiss' focus on only right wing accounts that were subject to the censorship tools (there should be a full list of accounts that were subjected to these tools, because I'm sure there's a ton of anti-war, anti-imperialism, etc dissident left in there as well). But I trust Taibbi, and will wait for the full story to unfold before passing judgement on it.
I am curious, would you have an issue if a source of true valuable information had the stipulation that you could publish it as long as you didn't do it for the NY Times or the Wall Street Journal because they had written derogatory misinformation about the source in the past?
Yeah, I thought the Twitter Files were stupid cause they just already told us what was known in the moment which was that liberals at Twitter didn't want this story out there but also that the story wasn't a big deal. I didn't know that Taibbi was required to only post about it on Twitter. Lol.
It shouldn’t be news that the MSM is broken to a great extent. The circumstances behind Taibbi publishing his nothing burger on Twitter is unimportant, if that.
Read your summary. I don't think the story is the smoking gun Tiabbi billed it as. But I'm not very impressed with the summary either.
No mention of the fact that the FBI had been in possession of the laptop in question for a year and were well aware that it was not Russian disinfo or hacked. That they had been listening in on all of Guliani's phone calls and were fully aware he was trying to generate media interest in the laptop. And that was the context in which they conveniently started whispering in Twitter and Facebook's ears that a big Russian disinfo dump was expected, backed by public pronouncements from their former colleagues.
As usual Barkan, you're about an eighth right here. I really enjoy your writing, and read a decent bit of it — and you're one of the few of the new (so-called) progressive wing that has some critical writing and thinking skills — but you can be incredibly myopic.
You say that Taibbi doesn't do any in-depth reporting anymore, and then you mention stories that are important to you that he doesn't cover (and it should be noted that they're mostly the stories important to the hall monitor, post-journalist types clogging Twitter's arteries). This reminds me of Nathan J. Robinson, the densest man on Earth, discussing Jesse Singal's reporting on gender issues with Glenn Greenwald and Briahna Joy Gray, and saying that Jesse's work isn't valid, or is even right-wing/reactionary, because it doesn't cover the story from the only angle that Robinson has deigned to be the acceptable one. Why does everyone think that all reporters need to be on the same beat all the time these days (and even seeing every issue the same way)? Shouldn't it be just the opposite?
In the last year or two, Taibbi has done long-form, deeply-reported pieces on the FBI's transformation into a domestic spying agency, the truth about the elections in Loudon County (maybe the only good reporting on that subject), deep dives into Justice Department abuses, the stablecoin/crypto crash, that Activision lawsuit, and tons more. Add to that a constant stream of smaller pieces about tech and financial weirdness, online censorship, civil liberties violations, abuses of power by both parties, and it's a strong body of recent work by any metric. He's also working on a book about profiteering during Covid and his Hate, Inc., serialized first on his Substack, is probably the best recent book about the media.
The problem is that people either don't read, ignore, or dismiss the stories Taibbi covers as "not important." Did Musk force Taibbi to release the Twitter Files on Twitter? Probably. Is it a publicity stunt for Musk, Taibbi, and Bari Weiss? Absolutely. It is a better way to get people to notice the story than quietly putting it on Taibbi's Substack? Almost definitely. I'm a long-term Taibbi subscriber (and also a liberal/lefty type and I think Taibbi is that too, although his politics don't matter as much as his quality to me), and it's always astounding to me when Taibbi puts out a long piece of great reporting about an important current event that nobody else has covered, and there are zero mentions of it anywhere.
If Taibbi had quietly released a long-form piece of writing on the Twitter imbroglio on his Substack, his thousands of subscribers would love it, and it would be otherwise ignored. Yes, Musk is hyping this up like a wrestling event, and guess what? It's working. People are talking about it, and they're forced to cover it. It's forcing the government to ramp up their censorious threats against Musk, which is making it an even bigger story.
I am eager for Taibbi's inevitable multi-part series, or book, on the Twitter Files, that those of us with a taste for original reporting and good writing can digest while the rest of the world ignores it, but until then: I hope Matt gives 'em hell.
Very thoughtful piece Ross. I found this article through a link in Andrew Sullivan's Substack. I've been reading Matt Taibbi for the past year or so, and he's done some great work. In fact, I think he's done some of the most in-depth, important reporting I've read: the kind of reporting we need much more of.
But I agree with you about The Twitter Files. I was disappointed to see he let Musk dictate the terms of how they were published. Reading that in his newsletter last week just gave me an uneasy feeling about the whole thing. It seems to go against everything an independent journalist should do. I don't like the idea of anyone dictating where a journalist has to publish something, no matter who the source is.
I also agree it was very difficult to read the files in Twitter posts rather than a more traditional article. I also don't think they really revealed anything we didn't already know through the previous work of Taibbi and others. Again, Taibbi is an important voice, but my trust has been somewhat weakend. Thanks for an insightful analysis! I look forward to reading more of your writing.
I have a Twitter account which I very rarely log into. Generally I don't like much and avoid social media. But I may now check my Twitter account (it it still works) to read Taibbi's piece (or pieces, or tweets). I like and admire his reportage. I don't have the problem Barkan has with Taibbi's choice to publish on Twitter to satisfy Musk; maybe I need to think about it more. The most important thing is to get the info out. It is too bad Musk apparently put a restriction on how Taibbi did this for the deal Musk offered him, but, as Barkan said (wrote), more or less, these are the realities of power. The rationale in this case is was it more important and useful to defy power or to report the story. For me, at present, it's the latter.
Ross, how many times does Matt Taibbi have to praise Matt Walsh, a Christian nationalist who led a harassment campaign against children's hospitals that resulted in bomb threats, for you to agree with the analysis that Taibbi is indeed a "hand maiden for the hard right" ?
Nope.
In a healthy society with a healthy journalism profession, the NYT, WaPo, NBC and others would be deploying huge numbers of their reporters to track down Ned, Parang and Yoel and dig, dig, dig to highlight the enormous damage done to civic society.
But ours is not a healthy society.
I read your comments with great interest and feel that you made some valid points. That said, I'm a firm believer that in many opinion pieces there is often times a "slip of the tongue" that exposes the real issue. I this instance it was your reporting that MT's Substack site is now generating a $1,000,000 a year in revenue (which is almost 10x the salary a typical reporter is paid). Clearly the vitriol surrounding Matt's efforts are grounded in good old fashioned jealousy.
What I don’t get is: why does Taibbi think he is opposing power? I thought everyone already knew that Twitter erroneously took down the Hunter Biden story? I read Taibbi’s thread and it was obvious that this whole thing is just another marketing scam on behalf of one side in an intra-elite conflict.
Agree with your observations. He would likely have been better off had he listened to your advice. That said - I hope he does pivot a bit to the type of reporting that he used to produce..... it bothers me greatly to see that sniping and shade from other reporters. It borders on the silly and petty and doesn't add anything to the conversation.
I also would say I have problems with how these Twitter files story is being dropped. Especially with Bari Weiss' focus on only right wing accounts that were subject to the censorship tools (there should be a full list of accounts that were subjected to these tools, because I'm sure there's a ton of anti-war, anti-imperialism, etc dissident left in there as well). But I trust Taibbi, and will wait for the full story to unfold before passing judgement on it.
I am curious, would you have an issue if a source of true valuable information had the stipulation that you could publish it as long as you didn't do it for the NY Times or the Wall Street Journal because they had written derogatory misinformation about the source in the past?
Yeah, I thought the Twitter Files were stupid cause they just already told us what was known in the moment which was that liberals at Twitter didn't want this story out there but also that the story wasn't a big deal. I didn't know that Taibbi was required to only post about it on Twitter. Lol.
For anyone interested in the substance of the scandal, as opposed to the narcissist media focus on themselves, this:
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/12/07/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-twitter-and-hunter-bidens-laptop/
It shouldn’t be news that the MSM is broken to a great extent. The circumstances behind Taibbi publishing his nothing burger on Twitter is unimportant, if that.
Read your summary. I don't think the story is the smoking gun Tiabbi billed it as. But I'm not very impressed with the summary either.
No mention of the fact that the FBI had been in possession of the laptop in question for a year and were well aware that it was not Russian disinfo or hacked. That they had been listening in on all of Guliani's phone calls and were fully aware he was trying to generate media interest in the laptop. And that was the context in which they conveniently started whispering in Twitter and Facebook's ears that a big Russian disinfo dump was expected, backed by public pronouncements from their former colleagues.
You completely miss the point. The point is that the hysteria over what Twitter did for one day was in no way scandalous or significant.
Also not scandalous is the FBI telling social media personnel what they should have had awareness of without cops coming to tell them anything.
Again, nothing here.
About the only scandal is Taibbi ripping off his paying subscribers to do Musk a solid.
No, you have completely refused to acknowledge any of my points I just made.
Because they have nothing to do with Taibbi’s thread and are pretty trivial.
Of course they have plenty to do with Tabbi's thread, and there is nothing trivial about the FBI interfering in a presidential election
In connection with Twitter, the link to the Post story, and the election, the FBI did nothing and certainly compared to what Comey did October 2016.
Try doing a little research starting with reading the piece I linked to.