In a new interview, investigative journalist Matt Taibbi reacted to the attacks from Democrats and the mainstream media over his and Michael Shellenberger’s reporting on the Twitter Files.
Their reporting on the Twitter Files has revealed how U.S. federal agencies have directed social media companies to suppress certain information, like the Hunter Biden laptop story.
“I thought it was surreal,” Taibbi said. “We expected to have a serious conversation with the material frankly which is neither a right nor a left issue but instead like an episode of Veep broke out. It was crazy. They mostly spent the entire time going after the motives of both myself and Mr. Shellenberger. The words of the day were: cherry-picked, money, and Elon Musk. And apart from that there really was no content to a lot of the discussion.”
“These stories are clearly newsworthy,” Taibbi said of the Twitter Files. “They are not particularly partisan, the bulk of them. And these attacks on myself and Mr. Shellenberger. It’s the kind of thing that drove the mainstream media wild when Donald Trump was in office. There would have been days and days of headlines of this kind of thing back then. Now, there is total unconcern about it. But I’ve been really troubled outside this entire period by the lack of esprit de corps among reporters about the story.”
“Normally when you get a big story you want the cavalry to come to help investigate and nobody did and I think that’s been a very troubling aspect,” Taibbi said. “This idea of journalists sticking up for one another and sticking up for civil liberties which used to be a no-brainer issue in this profession, again, it’s gone. It’s just something that has disappeared entirely from the business.”
