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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31649 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022

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The "Twitter Censorship Files" (WSJ, archived link) promise to shed some light on the Hunter Biden's Laptop Saga:

The Twitter documents published by Mr. Taibbi include part of what appears to be a memo from James Baker, the Twitter deputy general counsel. “I support the conclusion that we need more facts to assess whether the materials were hacked. At this stage, however, it is reasonable for us to assume that they may have been and that caution is warranted,” Mr. Baker wrote.

He continued that “there are some facts that indicate that the materials may have been hacked, while there are others indicating that the computer was either abandoned and/or the owner consented to allow the repair shop to access it for at least some purposes. We simply need more information.”

With an election so close, any delay helped the Biden campaign, which was trying to squelch the Hunter Biden story that raised questions about what Joe Biden knew about Hunter’s foreign business dealings. Twitter went ahead and suppressed the story across its platform, going so far as to suspend the New York Post’s Twitter account.

Apparently, no light can be shed without heat. Matt Taibbi agreed to certain conditions in obtaining the files:

Very shortly, I’m going to begin posting a long thread of information on Twitter, at my account, @mtaibbi. [...] There’s a long story I hope to be able to tell soon, but can’t, not quite yet anyway. What I can say is that in exchange for the opportunity to cover a unique and explosive story, I had to agree to certain conditions.

The conversation is therefore veering towards journalistic ethics rather than the content. That WSJ op-ed I linked to above leads with the following:

Elon Musk’s release of internal emails relating to Twitter’s 2020 censorship is news by any definition, even if the mainstream media dismiss it. There will be many threads to unspool as more is released, but a couple of points are already worth making.

The first is that Mr. Musk would do the country a favor by releasing the documents all at once for everyone to inspect. So far he’s dribbled them out piecemeal through journalist Matt Taibbi’s Twitter feed, which makes it easier for the media to claim they can’t report on documents because they can’t independently confirm them.

It is funny how establishment mainstream media is now clutching its pearls with journalistic ethics when they have the FTX fraudster running around in an "apology tour" and saying that he was bumbling buffoon, where there are court filings showing corporate malfeasance by the fraudster. We are witnessing corruption in the establishment political class of every color and the media is simply trying to protect itself with misdirection of their own corruption when it comes to Twitter! This is not about politics anymore it is about the powerful establishment doing whatever it wants without the interest of the public in mind anymore. So whatever I see more Twitter revelations I'll just consider it corruption, it is as simple as that.

Eh, what’s that got to do with the price of tea in China?

There’s more than one outfit covering the news. Some of them might even employ more than one reporter. Why would you expect coverage of a billionaire scammer to match opinions on coverage of censorship for a political hot potato?

Well if you think that WSJ has covered SBF the same way that the editorial board goes after Musk in various opinion pieces since the Twitter take over it is up to you. The point is that the billionaire scammer was a significant contributor to politicians that regulated the financial market which should be a political hot potato too, the same way that elected officials having back channel to remove tweets and twitter accounts is. But if you think that is unreasonable to hold politicians accountable for actions or inaction that obviously isn't in the public's interests, you are missing the point of journalisms role in a democracy.

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