RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thefederalist.com/2022/12/13/abc-cbs-and-other-corporate-media-black-out-coverage-of-twitter-files-story/

Corporate media outlets have all but refused to cover the unfolding “Twitter Files” published by independent journalists including Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi throughout the last week. According to Grabien, a news clipping and transcribing service, a search of its database finds that among the three major networks — ABC News, CBS News, and NBC News — the words “Twitter Files” have been discussed on air a collective total of one time since Dec. 2, the day Elon Musk announced the release of the first batch.

When it comes to cable network coverage, CNN and MSNBC have mentioned the words “Twitter Files” just 13 times and 17 times, respectively, since Dec. 2, compared to Fox News’s 374 mentions of the keywords. A Monday search on CNN’s website for “Twitter Files” turns up zero search results for any coverage of the independent journalists’ ongoing investigations.

The media blackout is odd, considering that the first five parts of the ongoing series have covered some of the corporate media’s previously favorite topics such as the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and Twitter’s subsequent banning of former President Donald Trump, which have received in-depth coverage for the last two years.

Other significant findings uncovered in the documents Musk turned over to Weiss and Taibbi include the role former FBI General Counsel Jim Baker played in Twitter’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story and the tech company’s frequent secret meetings with federal intelligence agencies in the run-up to the 2020 election. While most Americans are not frequent users of Twitter, the company’s relationship with government intelligence agencies and its apparent influence on federal elections is undeniably worthy of major network coverage.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/left-wing-journalists-are-truly-some-of-the-worst-people-on-the-planet/

Think what you will of Donald Trump – personally, I could use a break from hearing about and from him – no one did more to expose the hypocrisy of the left than he did, and he didn’t actually do anything to cause it except to exist. Hillary Clinton was supposed to win in 2016, breaking the “glass ceiling” and ushering in an era of GOP destruction. Instead, she lost to this “monster,” setting off Democrats, both with and without press passes, into a rage-spiral that not only hasn’t stopped, but has only sped up. That included “conservatives” who seem to resent political victories they claimed they always wanted simply because they were done on his watch.

Donald Trump didn’t make them insane, his existence simply sped up the process – pulling back the curtain, or actually pulling the curtain and the rod off the wall completely. I truly despise them.

The reason for the title is watching these people “cover” the revelations of Twitter’s internal deliberations and actions on the Hunter Biden story before the 2020 election is something to behold that should make everyone sick, I know it does me. I won’t go so far as to say it would have changed the outcome of the election, but to pretend it couldn’t have is asinine. And the people pretending otherwise deserve a swift smack across the face with the cold, dead fish of reality, if only metaphorically.

But viewers and readers of the leftist media wouldn’t have any idea of the story at all. CBS News didn’t bother covering it at all. The Washington Post and New York Times burned their calories downplaying collusion between government and soon to be government officials and the silencing of a media outlet’s major story because they’re on the other team.

https://quillette.com/2022/12/06/at-last-mainstream-journalists-are-starting-to-report-the-truth-about-youth-gender-clinics/

The rise of youth gender clinics in Western nations has presented a case study in the dysfunction of mainstream media. Famous mastheads and broadcasters, especially those regarded as progressive, have failed to cover major stories in this area, bungled those they have covered, and ignored scientific evidence that conflicts with the demand that self-identified gender must trump biological sex in all areas of policy-making (a system of beliefs often described as gender ideology). Interested news consumers have been left to sift through the uneven reporting on this subject that takes place on social media, where gold nuggets of truth intermingle freely with misinformation.

Yet many people still believe that it’s worthwhile to critique journalists who cover (or, more commonly, fail to cover) this topic, in the hope that they will ultimately choose to do their job properly. And there are good practical reasons for doing so. As with other specialized issues, if the mass media doesn’t cover it, only a small minority of (typically web-savvy) people will make it their business to educate themselves. And while New York Times coverage alone won’t dissuade a non-binary girl from a double mastectomy or other irreversible medical steps, Times reporting can get the attention of those elite policymakers—in politics, health care, and academia—who’ve legitimized and facilitated the medicalised transition of a fast-expanding group of minors.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/12/05/media-tailspin-continues-as-trust-hits-record-lows-ii-tipp-poll/

With mass layoffs at a number of companies and new revelations of intervention in recent elections, the media have had a rough two months. Now, it gets even rougher. According to the latest I&I/TIPP Poll, trust in the media has now fallen to record lows.

Each month, the I&I/TIPP Poll asks respondents two questions: “How much trust do you have in the traditional or established news media (Example: Washington Post, New York Times, NPR, CBS News, etc.) to report the news accurately and fairly?”

Then the same question is asked about the “alternative media,” which includes less-mainstream outlets, the New York Post, Washington Times, News Max, The Daily Caller, and Real Clear Politics, among others.

For both sets of media, the news is not good.

In the case of the traditional media, just 33% of poll respondents said they either had a “lot of trust” (12%) or “quite a bit of trust” (21%) in these outlets. But the “No trust” group totaled 61%, with 32% expressing “little trust” and 29% “no trust at all.”

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11499137/Liberal-journalists-rush-criticize-reporter-Matt-Taibbi-releasing-Elon-Musks-Twitter-Files.html

Left-wing journalists have unsurprisingly rushed to smear reporter Matt Taibbi for releasing Elon Musk’s explosive ‘Twitter Files’.

Musk, the billionaire owner of Twitter, gave Taibbi access to the documents, which he began to publish excerpts of on the social media site on Friday evening. 

The documents included internal Twitter emails appearing to show staffers removing tweets showing a nude Hunter Biden at the behest of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign.

Taibbi, a podcaster and former Rolling Stone correspondent, came under heavy criticism from top journalists at NBC News, MSNBC, the Daily Beast, and elsewhere, who accused him of doing ‘PR work’ and committing journalistic malfeasance.

‘Matt Taibbi…what sad, disgraceful downfall. I swear, kids, he did good work back in the day,’ tweeted Daily Beast columnist Wajahat Ali.

Matt Taibbi, a podcaster and former Rolling Stone correspondent, came under heavy criticism from top journalists at NBC News, MSNBC, the Daily Beast, and elsewhere over his publication of files relating to Twitter’s censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story

NBC News reporters Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny were among those who criticized Taibbi’s work, calling it ‘PR work’ and ‘really bad reporting’

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/12/the-meltdown-over-elon-musks-covid-misinformation-policy/

More free speech on Twitter ‘will literally kill people,’ cry the hysterics.

In September 2016, an Atlantic essay from Salena Zito introduced a line that would become one of the defining phrases of the Trump era: “The press,” Zito wrote of then-candidate Donald Trump’s propensity for exaggeration and embellishment, “take him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.”

The axiom, or some version of it, comes to mind amid the frenzied response to Elon Musk’s recent loosening of Twitter guidelines on Covid-related content. Last week, users noticed a curt message on Twitter’s “COVID-19 Misinformation” page: “Effective November 23, 2022, Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy.” What that means, the New York Daily News reported, is that “Twitter will no longer flag tweets containing misinformation about COVID-19 nor take action against the accounts that post them; the reversal of a longstanding policy implemented at the peak of the pandemic and the . . . latest major shift under new owner Elon Musk.” Since January 2020, some 11,000 accounts — including those of members of Congress such as Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) — and nearly 100,000 posts have been removed under the auspices of that Vijaya Gadde–era policy.

Musk’s move was quickly denounced as literally homicidal by a chorus of “misinformation” “experts,” progressive think-tank scholars, journalists, public-health censors, and various other professional hysterics. “Twitter has quietly changed their policies to allow COVID-19 misinformation,” Columbia University “science communicator” Lucky Tran emoted. “This change will literally kill people.” The “consequences of not getting this right — of spreading that misinformation — is literally tens of thousands of people dying unnecessarily,” White House Covid coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha warned the Associated Press. “Misinformation is a life-or-death issue,” tech journalist Emily Dreyfuss told the Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz. “It’s certain to get many more people killed from covid than otherwise would,” added Johns Hopkins health sociologist Jon Shaffer.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/matt-taibbi-douglas-murray-dominate-trust-in-media-debate/
The 39 point swing in favor of Murray and Taibbi’s position is the largest ever recorded in a Munk debate.

Conservative commentator Douglas Murray and veteran reporter Matt Taibbi soundly defeated their opponents in a Wednesday evening debate on the question of whether to trust the mainstream media, convincing a significant segment of the audience to abandon their faith in an institution they say is hopelessly compromised by bias.

The debate, held at Roy Thomson Hall in downtown Toronto and sponsored by the Canadian cultural non-profit Munk Debates, featured Taibbi and Murray squaring off against the tremendously popular non-fiction author Malcolm Gladwell and New York Times opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg, who made the case for continued trust in major American and Canadian outlets.

Pre-debate polling showed the audience virtually split 48 to 52 percent on the question of whether to trust the mainstream media.

However, over the course of nearly two hours, Taibbi and Murray compellingly persuaded over one-third of audience members (39 percent) to abandon their prior allegiance to the position championed by Gladwell and Goldberg.

To date, Taibbi and Murray won by the largest margin ever recorded at a Munk Debate. The result stunned the sold-out crowd of 2,630 viewers normally accustomed to smaller swings.

“I grew up in the press. My father was a reporter. My stepmother was a reporter. My godparents were reporters. Every adult I knew growing up seemed to be in media,” Taibbi said during his opening remarks to start the debate. “I love the news business. It’s in my bones. But I mourn for it. It’s destroyed itself.”

Taibbi’s opening remarks echoed those raised in his most recent book Hate Inc., in which he explores how the mainstream American media abandoned its commitment to neutrality in favor of fan service. Taibbi argues the change was driven by an effort to retain a niche audience of like-minded readers and viewers who remained after the industry was gutted by tech-driven changes in the advertising market.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/11/when-journalists-become-speech-police/

Too many in the media now seek to neuter free expression in the name of saving it.

EXCERPTS

Call it Cooke’s First Law: Whatever the story, however complex its details, members of the American press will react by announcing who must be forbidden to speak going forward.

That is what too many journalists are now — not firefighters, not mediators, not conveyors of vital information, but zealous obscurantists staffing would-be censorship agencies. In comes the news, and, within minutes, out comes the latest justification for shutting everyone up. A mentally ill homeless man attacks Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a hammer? That’s the Republican Party’s fault for running political ads against Pelosi — and it must stop. A disturbed man shoots up a gay club in Colorado Springs, Colo.? That’s the fault of Americans who object to drag shows for kindergartners — and they must be quiet. Elon Musk plans to moderate Twitter with a lighter hand? That will cause “havoc” and put lives at risk — and it must be prevented at all costs.

Worse still is the grotesque tendency for members of the press to cast their transparently self-serving determinations as raw scientific truths. It’s not the opinion of NBC, Axios, or the Washington Post that Twitter would be better left as is; it’s a fact — as determined by the “experts.” That these “experts” have been repeatedly proven to be full of it — remember when the entirely legitimate Hunter Biden laptop story was “a Russian disinformation campaign,” and therefore needed to be suppressed just before the election? — seems not to matter. Nor, indeed, does it seem to matter that a great many of our arbiters of truth are rank hypocrites and contemptible lunatics. The temptation to cast one’s preferences as fact is a remarkably strong one, and, for now at least, many modern journalists seem entirely incapable of resisting it.

How else might one explain the contemporary New York Times, which has gotten into the infuriating habit of simultaneously contributing to, and complaining about, America’s “speech problem”? Earlier this year, the Times’ editorial board complained that “Americans are losing hold of a fundamental right as citizens of a free country: the right to speak their minds and voice their opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned.” This development, the editors concluded, was the inevitable product of “the political left and the right” being “caught in a destructive loop of condemnation and recrimination around cancel culture.”

Which . . . well, would that, by any chance, be the “condemnation and recrimination” of which the Times is routinely guilty itself?