JRE 1940 · June 27, 2024

Matt Taibbi

politicsjournalismtechnologyconspiracybusiness

Who is Matt Taibbi?

Matt Taibbi is a journalist and author. He writes and publishes TK News at taibbi.substack.com and hosts the "America This Week podcast with Walter Kirn." He's also been the lead reporter on the Twitter Files, which come out on Twitter at @mtaibbi. www.taibbi.substack.com

Topics and Timestamps

01Matt Taibbi discusses his ongoing work on the Twitter Files and what they reveal about government censorship
02Conversation covers the relationship between major media institutions and intelligence agencies
03Taibbi explains how social media platforms became tools for information control
04Discussion of the decline of traditional journalism and rise of independent media
05Analysis of how narratives are shaped and controlled in modern information landscape
06Exploration of corporate power, institutional capture, and resistance to accountability
▶Taibbi explains the origins of the Twitter Files investigation0:05:30
▶Discussion of direct government requests for content removal from Twitter0:18:45
▶How traditional media ignored or minimized the Twitter Files story0:31:20
▶Taibbi's transition from institutional journalism to independent Substack reporting0:45:15
▶Analysis of how social media became a tool for institutional power and control1:02:30

The Show

Matt Taibbi sits down with Joe to talk about his investigative work on the Twitter Files, the bombshell reporting that exposed coordination between the government and Twitter around content moderation. Taibbi walks through how this all started and what the documents actually reveal about how decisions were made to suppress certain stories and narratives.

The core issue Taibbi keeps coming back to is that major institutions, whether it's the FBI, the CIA, or other agencies, were directly involved in flagging content and pushing Twitter to remove posts and accounts. This wasn't some theoretical concern about misinformation. These were actual requests from government actors asking a private company to censor speech. The wild part is how normalized this became, like it was just standard operating procedure.

They dig into how the mainstream media basically ignored or dismissed the Twitter Files when they first dropped, which Taibbi sees as a sign of how captured the institution has become. If you work for a major outlet that relies on government access and advertising money, you're probably not going to aggressively investigate stories that make the government look bad. There's structural incentive against it.

Taibbi also talks about his own trajectory from being inside these institutions to becoming independent through his Substack. He's more free to report what he actually finds without worrying about editorial pressure or institutional politics. The irony is that independent journalists on Substack are now doing the work that major outlets used to do.

The conversation touches on how social media companies, despite being private, have become quasi-governmental actors carrying out censorship on behalf of powerful institutions. It's not government censorship in the First Amendment sense, but it's functionally similar. You can be removed from the internet for reasons determined by people in power, and there's no real recourse.

Taibbi makes the point that this whole machinery of control fell apart when Elon Musk took over Twitter and started releasing the documents. If that hadn't happened, we'd probably never know about any of this. The default state of these institutions is secrecy and accountability to no one.

Best Quotes

“The Twitter Files showed us that this wasn't theoretical, this was actual government actors reaching out to a private company asking them to censor speech”

— Matt Taibbi