By now, you’ve hopefully heard about Matt Taibbi’s bombshell-packed “Twitter Files” exposé on the coordinated effort among Twitter brass to censor speech and suppress material that could cause damage to the Democratic Party.
Go check it out if you haven’t had a chance yet. And then check out how NBC News “dystopia beat” senior reporter Ben Collins is trying to discredit Taibbi’s work and look cool while doing so:
Imagine throwing it all away to do PR work for the richest person in the world. Humiliating shit.
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) December 2, 2022
More humiliating than calling yourself a journalist and getting pissy about actual journalism? Because that’s pretty humiliating.
Speak* truth** to*** power.
*tweet
**selective leaks from the richest man in the world
***for— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) December 2, 2022
So, if we’re understand Ben correctly, the fact that Elon Musk is the richest man in the world makes the material he released to Taibbi illegitimate. And it makes Taibbi’s reporting illegitimate.
Ben Collins is not a good journalist — and he’s not a good person.
Why, exactly, are you so butthurt about this?
— Arthur Boreman Once Held His Breath for 30 Seconds (@ArthurBoreman) December 3, 2022
Guy who pretends to be journalist on TV mad at scoop.
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) December 3, 2022
I'm sorry his reporting is making you look bad
— Sean Agnew (@seanagnew) December 3, 2022
You can't spin this and it infuriates you.
— Sean Medlock (@Sean_Medlock) December 3, 2022
That’s ultimately what this boils down to: Ben Collins is pissed that Matt Taibbi and Elon Musk are practicing actual transparency. Politicians working with a social media giant to keep important and possibly extremely consequential information from the public under the banner of “safety” sounds like it could be the inspiration for a modern-day Orwellian novel. As a journalist on the “dystopia beat,” you’d think Ben Collins would be all over that.
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Of course, if you thought that, you’d also have to be totally unfamiliar with Ben Collins’ journalistic integrity and ethics, or rather, the lack thereof.
https://twitter.com/ZaidJilani/status/1598836386622152704
Ben Collins, like so many other media Guardians of Truth™, could never be bothered to even raise half an eyebrow about the Hunter Biden laptop story. But he’s absolutely furious that Twitter and Democratic politicians’ attempts to suppress it are being exposed. Just in case you were wondering where his priorities are.
Just in case you were wondering where the MSM’s priorities are. Here are some tweets from other so-called “journalists” that Collins is retweeting and spreading like so much bullsh*t:
On his Substack, Matt Taibbi tells his readers that he "had to agree to certain conditions" to do the Hunter Biden laptop thread for Musk. pic.twitter.com/49i58VbIIX
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) December 3, 2022
https://twitter.com/DevonHeinen/status/1598831056157028353
sir I was told this would be based on TWITTER FILES not a characterization by an unnamed former employee pic.twitter.com/Ax43eyWfXF
— farhad manjoo (@fmanjoo) December 3, 2022
BREAKING: Twitter removed some nude photos of a guy that were posted without his consent. The horror! SUBSCRIBE TO MY SUBSTACK
— Jason Paladino (@jason_paladino) December 3, 2022
Okay then. That’s the big story.
Taibbi says, seemingly with access to all internal docs, the earlier big claim that the government had directly intervened (“stepping in”) to suppress a story before the election has no evidence.
Also seems some nonconsensual nudity was removed. pic.twitter.com/2N5b6fBdiA
— zeynep tufekci (@zeynep) December 3, 2022
https://twitter.com/mmasnick/status/1598837123993374720
Watching some of the most famous, most powerful and richest men red-pill themselves into disaster. Pretty wild!
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) December 2, 2022
To leap to political contributions as the reason the right was more often reported for rule breaking is just bad reasoning and really bad reporting. Good thing this guy doesn't have an editor. https://t.co/V5r8PSUu0y
— Brandy Zadrozny (@BrandyZadrozny) December 3, 2022
me at the end of this tweet thread pic.twitter.com/uMD27IXZ3d
— Brandy Zadrozny (@BrandyZadrozny) December 3, 2022
So. Much. Journalisming.
Elon Musk paid $44 billion to discover what we already knew: content moderation is messy and involves whole teams of people with a range of viewpoints trying to appease different political factions.
He then gave “leaks” to a Substack Man to present it as a blockbuster. https://t.co/BCqTHaiaWP
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) December 3, 2022
Ben Collins wants to cast Matt Taibbi as just some “Substack Man” and not a legit journalist because in addition to exposing foul play behind the scenes at Twitter, Taibbi is also indirectly exposing the utter failure of the mainstream media to do their jobs. Taibbi is far from a right-wing apologist, but he hasn’t let his personal political philosophy prevent him from seeking out the truth, even if it makes the Left look bad. And he deserves major props for that. That’s how journalism is supposed to work.
It’s not supposed to work like this:
What Elon Musk’s Twitter files have revealed so far is that content moderation at Twitter WAS being decided by a team of people with differing viewpoints.
Now it’s being decided by the richest man on Earth with an axe to grind against one political party — a true scandal.
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) December 3, 2022
These are regular people and private citizens doing regular comms work and asking good questions. Unbelievable hack stuff here. https://t.co/JjcoiuGl5V
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) December 3, 2022
“Unbelievable hack stuff here.” Wethinks the gentleman doth project too much.
Ben, you should cry more.
— Jeremy Redfern (@JeremyRedfernFL) December 3, 2022
Oh, he’ll cry. Just as soon as he finishes panicking and deflecting.
I’m sorry this is happening to you.
— Peekaso (@peekaso) December 3, 2022
We’re not. The revelations in Taibbi’s reporting are not necessarily surprising to those who have long suspected shady business at the top of Twitter, but they’re valuable nonetheless. And you know that’s just eating up Real Journalists™ like Ben Collins inside.
He’s reporting a story.
You should try it sometime.
— That Goddamned Finkelstein Shit Kid (@Supreme____Beef) December 3, 2022
Please. As if.
https://twitter.com/MattPalumbo12/status/1598836028143329280
Bam.
Editor’s note: This post has been updated with additional tweets.
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NBC News’ Ben Collins barely holds it together explaining how Elon Musk will destroy our democracy
Precious: NBC News’ Ben Collins shames Elon Musk for responding to a tweet ‘libeling’ him
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