Taibbi, Twitter, and the Narrative-MakersAs we learn more about Twitter's massaging the news, Matt Taibbi and Douglas Murray make hash of mainstream media and two hapless defenders
Rod Dreher
Dec 4, 2022
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I tell you this to explain why posting has been light. What a kick to get to the hotel last evening and see what Matt Taibbi has revealed on his Twitter, about how the social media giant suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story at a crucial point just before the 2020 election. Here's where Taibbi's tweetstorm starts; click on this to read the whole thing:
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598822959866683394Basically, internal Twitter documents show that its senior executives suppressed commentary on the Hunter Biden laptop story, even as they knew (documents show) that they were on very shaky ground in doing so. Even Jack Dorsey wasn't full briefed on what they were doing.
After Taibbi dropped the information, some in the Liberal Media Industrial Complex rushed to denounce him. We conservatives by now are not surprised by the lack of professionalism and the extreme bias by many in our mainstream media, but now we're at the "I used to be disgusted, but now I try to be amused" stage. But nah, I can't really be amused, because the stakes are really high, and we are seeing Left elites going berserk with anger at Elon Musk, not because he is a conservative (he certainly isn't), but because he is trying to make the most important social media outlet on the planet slightly more fair and balanced. That tells you a lot about the class that rules us. They believe they have a right to control the Narrative, and wail and gnash their teeth when that power is threatened.
If you don't want to read the entire Taibbi thread, Reason magazine has a good summary. Reason points out that it's interesting to see all this, but:
But again, the informed public already knew that the mess had been made by some combination of incompetence and employees' anti-Republican biases.
The most interesting revelation in Taibbi's thread is that Twitter's top executives were warned, over and over again, that this decision was going to create a backlash like nothing they had ever seen before. Rep. Ro Khanna (D–Calif.), a progressive lawmaker, repeatedly emailed a Twitter communications staffer to complain that the firm was violating "1st Amendment principles." (He raised some very valid points in his communications with the company, though strictly speaking the First Amendment does not apply in this situation.) NetChoice, a tech industry trade association, explicitly told Twitter that this would be the company's "Access Hollywood moment." (Unlike Twitter, both Khanna and NetChoice come off looking pretty good in all this.)
It's true that most of this stuff was known, but it's still important to have it confirmed. And it's important that more people know about this, and pressure Republican lawmakers to take some sort of action to level the playing field.
See, this is why I keep pointing to Viktor Orban as a potential model for aggressive conservative government. Orban knows very well that the establishment media are dead set against him, and have no intention of being fair. But he's not simply satisfied to stomp his feet and complain about it. In Britain, for example, the BBC is entirely captured by the political and cultural Left, but what do the Tories do about it? Nothing much, as far as I can tell (I'm open to correction). It's like they satisfy themselves with this as if it were part of the natural order.
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Source:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/taibbi-twitter-and-the-narrative-makers/
