Matt Taibbi: How the Left Lost Its Mind and Legacy Media Its Audience

The independent journalist talks about true press freedom, the Twitter Files, Russiagate, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

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Matt Taibbi: How the Left Lost Its Mind and Legacy Media Its Audience

Before Matt Taibbi was sparring with Democratic members of Congress on Capitol Hill earlier this year over the Twitter Files, he was a darling of the progressive left, appearing regularly on shows like Democracy Now! and others hosted by Bill Moyers and Rachel Maddow.

Though he was always a fierce critic of the Democratic establishment, the rise of Donald Trump suddenly meant that anyone nominally left of center—including progressive journalists like Taibbi—was expected to support Hillary Clinton unconditionally. So when he attacked her as a sellout, argued that the Russiagate narrative was mostly bullshit, and equated the manipulative tactics of right and left media personalities, progressives gave him the cold shoulder. Elected Democrats started treating him like a puppet of the right.

In 2020, Taibbi started publishing his work on Substack and quickly became one of the platform's most popular writers, earning far more than he ever did at Rolling Stone, where he had been chief political reporter. He became even more of a pariah by publishing exhaustive reports that documented how the government sought to control what was said on Twitter about COVID-19 and efforts by Russia to influence U.S. elections. Congressional Democrats unconvincingly pilloried him as a fake journalist, an apologist for Vladimir Putin, and a stooge for Elon Musk.

I caught up with Taibbi at FreedomFest, an annual gathering held this year in Memphis, to talk about the new challenges to free speech, why legacy media is dying, and how identity politics are poisoning political discourse.

Comments

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She did not die from a coincidence… she died with a coincidence.

[mad.casual]

Exhibit No. 983,753,498,221 that we've gone completely insane:
Remember when Sinead O' Connor tore up a picture of JP II to protest Catholic Church abuse scandal and, of all people, *Madonna* defended The Church by tearing up a picture of Joey Buttafuoco* and declaring him "The real enemy".

*For those who don't recall Joey made news when his, then 17 yr. old, girlfriend Amy Fisher non-fatally shot Joey's wife, Mary Jo, in the face.

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Alternative Headline:

How the Fourth Estate Became the Fifth Column.

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[bacchys]

Did you ask Taibi why he lost his mind, and why he pretends the findings of Mueller and the Senate Intelligence Committee on Russia's interference in the 2016 election don't show "RussiaGate" was true?

His #TwitterFiles is a dishonest narrative. He's become what he pretends to rail against.

[Dennis Hanna]

The so-called “Free Press”
John Swinton and
Hunter S. Thompson

“One night, probably in 1880, John Swinton, then the preeminent New York journalist, was the guest of honour at a banquet given him by the leaders of his craft. Someone who knew neither the press nor Swinton offered a toast to the independent press. Swinton outraged his colleagues by replying:
“There is no such thing, at this date of the world’s history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it.
There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with.
Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone.
The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press?
We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.”
(Source: Labor’s Untold Story, by Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais, published by United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America, NY, 1955/1979.)

“The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits—a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.”
(Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas)

The so-called “Fourth Estate”
exhibits itself as mere “gossip gluttonous gromlins” and “rapacious rumor rats.”
In a word, presstitutes.

Presstitute is a term that applies to journalism that is misleadingly tailored to fit a particular partisan, financial or business agenda. Coined by Gerald Celente, the word is a portmanteau of press and prostitute.

Offensiveness is a necessary consequence of opinions strongly held and openly expressed, and free societies should treasure and protect it. An idea that offends no one is not worth entertaining.

dennis hanna




[Calvinius]

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