While much of the social media ecosystem was shocked and outraged by last night’s publication of the so-called “Twitter Files”---revealing high-level collusion between Big Tech, US intelligence, and the Democratic Party---one group in particular was less than impressed: liberal-leaning journalists.
Within hours of the publication of a historic Twitter thread, mainstream media reporters descended on the social media site en masse to claim the exposé was a “nothing burger.” They accused its author, 52-year-old contributing editor for Rolling Stone and journalist Matt Taibbi, of being a lackey of Twitter owner Elon Musk.
“Imagine throwing it all away to do PR work for the richest person in the world,” read one tweet by Ben Collins, a senior reporter for NBC News, who went on to insist publishing the explosive investigation was “humiliating s***.”
Just a few hours later, MSNBC’s Mehdi Hassan published a nearly-identical tweet: “Imagine volunteering to do online PR work for the world's richest man on a Friday night, in service of nakedly and cynically right-wing narratives, and then pretending you're speaking truth to power.”
Others insisted that the files somehow proved that there’s “no evidence” to support the “big claim” that “the government had directly intervened to suppress a story before the election.”
According to acclaimed journalist Glenn Greenwald, all these critics were missing the point completely, and suggested that they may be doing so on purpose.
“These liberal media employees operate as a hive mind, an in-group pack, reciting the same phrases on cue,” Greenwald wrote in an popular Twitter thread debunking popular liberal reactions to the revelations, noting “they have no novel thoughts. They're Democratic Party activists who unite as pack animals.”
“You have to be either extremely stupid or extremely dishonest to think Taibbi was saying he found no evidence of US political officials involved,” Greenwald continues. “In fact, the tweet they're pointing to — to claim @ElonMusk lied by saying Dem officials were involved — says the opposite.”
In reality, the files demonstrate that “Twitter lied when saying they censored this story because the docs were hacked by Russia,” Taibbi concludes, explaining that Twitter higher-ups “know there was no evidence of this!”
Training his fire on the critics responsible for the “personal attacks” on Taibbi, Greenwald opined that “watching little obedient dweebs at NBC, CNN and the Daily Beast claim *Matt Taibbi* is a servant to power is the most brazen case of projection I've ever seen..”
Whereas “Taibbi spent his career and still does exposing Wall St and CIA's lies,” i.e. Russiagate,” establishment reporters “are their loyal mouthpieces,” Greenwald claims.
According to the highly-acclaimed journalist who helped publish explosive documents revealed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, these reactions are indicative of a broader pathology afflicting establishment journalists:
“Not one media outlet that spread this CIA lie - that everyone knows is a lie - has admitted that they did this or explained what happened. That's because they lied on purpose,” Greenwald says. “And that's why these media employees are so enraged at Taibbi: they hate being reminded of their fraud.”
Indeed, “at this point, the real story long ago ceased being about the contents of the Biden archive itself,” Greenwald concludes. “The real story is how the CIA, corporate media and Big Tech all united to spread a CIA lie and manipulate the 2020 election by using it to censor reporting about Joe Biden.”