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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.

I don't think having journalists agree to terms is per se improper, and I also don't have reason to doubt that the general thrust of Taibbi's reporting (Twitter employees tried hard to make up reasons to suppress the Hunter story) is off-base, but I'm not really a fan of how this is being deployed. Musk has an obvious incentive to tar the previous management of his company in as bad of a light as possible, and he has a long practice of having his employees sign NDAs. He can't claim to be motivated by the noble pursuit of transparency here, and it's reasonable to be suspicious that he's potentially hiding some things. Taibbi is just one journalist, and he has his biases. Although I don't have reason to believe Taibbi is acting dishonestly, I can't think of an argument against having more scrutinizing eyes examine the document trove. It's needlessly giving ammunition to people who are already primed to dismiss the revelations.

The comparisons to Edward Snowden establishing conditions don't really match up. Similar to Musk, Snowden would be incentivized for his leak to be as much of a bombshell as possible. But if I recall correctly, Snowden had multiple journalist outfits examine the documents, and all of them were transparent about what conditions he set (namely, don't disclose things that could endanger current operatives or something) edit: this did not happen

But if I recall correctly, Snowden had multiple journalist outfits examine the document

You do not recall correctly. He took his leaks to the guardian, because he trusted Glenn Greenwald, and the guardian decided to involve the nyt because they were outside the British government's jurisdiction and the guardian was being threatened with legal action.

Also I don't understand what you are talking about re transparency about what conditions he set? Don't disclose things that could endanger current operatives wasn't the only condition, Snowden wasn't the only one who set conditions (both newspapers did too, and both had conversations with their governments about it) and there is zero reason to believe they were transparent about every condition.

You're right and I was wrong. It's true that several journalistic outfits had access to the data, but my recollection about how transparent they were about their publication decisions was faulty.

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