The mainstream media has once again failed to cover a trove of internal Twitter emails revealing how the FBI coerced the social media platform to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Journalist Michael Shellenberger detailed on Monday how an ex-FBI officer turned Twitter lawyer held a secret one-on-one briefing with the Bureau before pushing the social media network to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story.
The Bureau is even said to have paid millions of dollars to Twitter executives to censor the information.
Shellenberger said in a follow-up interview with Tucker Carlson that the nation’s top law enforcement agency essentially engaged in a ‘psychological operation’ to convince social media platforms and mainstream news organizations that the story was ‘Russian disinformation’ — despite knowing that it was legitimate.
But by Tuesday, several mainstream media outlets were still not reporting on the findings.
In fact, many have published op-eds and articles over the past few weeks denouncing the so-called Twitter Files as not being newsworthy or have questioned their findings.
It now remains unclear whether these news organizations had also been contacted by FBI agents or former agents convincing them that the laptop story was untrue.
DailyMail.com has reached out to these outlets for comment, but have not heard back as of press time.
Elon Musk enlisted the help of conservative journalists earlier this month to help expose how Twitter suppressed conservative voices
Washington Post SLAMS Elon Musk as being a ‘vindictive hypocrite’ as it declares the Twitter Files are a ‘nothingburger’
One of the harshest denouncements of the Twitter Files came from the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post, which called Musk a ‘vindictive hypocrite’ for releasing the documents.
In an article published on Friday, reporter Will Oremus slammed Musk for getting Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger to release the documents while suspending accounts he disagreed with.
‘Over the past two weeks, a group of writers chosen by Elon Mus to review Twitter’s previously confidential internal messages has portrayed a handful of accountable “trust and safety” executives as making critical decisions about online political speech based partly on their own left-leaning intuitions,’ he began.
‘But there’s a glaring irony at the project’s core that its authors never acknowledge.
‘If a lack of transparency, accountability or consistency in the process by which tech giants make far-reaching content moderation decisions is cause for alarm — and it should be — then there is no more egregious example than the one Musk himself has set since buying Twitter for $44billion in October.
‘This week alone, Musk — who billed himself as a “free speech absolutist” permanently banned an account that had been tweeting public data about his private jet, creating a new, ad hoc policy to justify the move.
‘Twitter then began suspending numerous other accounts, including those of rival social network Mastodon and those of several journalists who had criticized the previous suspensions, all without immediate explanation.’
One of the harshest denouncements of the Twitter Files came from the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post, which called Musk a ‘vindictive hypocrite’ for releasing the documents
Oremus continued to write that the Twitter Files put at stake ‘the role of social media in political discourse and whether Silicon Valley tech firms can be trusted to fairly and judiciously wield their power over who gets heard in the modern public square.’
But he said, ‘whether you find the Twitter Files a bombshell or a “nothingburger” probably depends on how much you already knew about the messy, often subjective work of online content moderation — and whether you were predisposed to see a political conspiracy at work in the documents.’
He continues to write that ‘even with the writers presumably cherry-picking the juiciest excerpts they could find, there’s little evidence that the company’s content moderation decisions were guided by an explicitly partisan agenda.
‘The screenshots mostly show Twitter officials earnestly wrestling with thorny questions of how to interpret and enforce their own policies, such as the policy against the publication of hacked materials, under which the company controversially blocked users from sharing a 2020 New York Post story about the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop.’
Oremus then went on to describe how Musk has been moderating the social media site since he took over the company — including allowing embattled rapper Kanye West back on to the platform before suspending him again.
‘Musk’s own casual disdain for any form of consistency of accountability in his own approach to content moderation belies the notion that the Twitter Files were a genuine exercise in transparency,’ he concluded.
‘In the context of his leadership, they come across as a mixture of vindictive score-settling, a made-for-social-media reality show and an attempt to distract from scrutiny of the personal fiefdom that Musk’s Twitter has quickly become.’
At the same time, the Post also published a report denying that Twitter’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story did not cost former President Donald Trump the election, saying that it actually garner interest in the story.
CNN urges Congress to subpoena ‘a complete set of the so-called Twitter Files’ as it denounces Elon Musk’s release of the documents as it questions its findings
In an op-ed published on Sunday, CNN commentators publicly questioned the findings of the Twitter Files as they slammed Musk for releasing the documents to only a select group of people.
Dean Obeidallah, a lawyer and contributor to the news organization, even went as far as suggesting Congress subpoena Twitter for all of the documents and question Musk on-air.
‘The reality is that the release of these documents has raised far more questions than answers,’ he wrote, noting that — at that point — only journalists Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi had been provided the documents.
‘But when other media outlets sought access to the files, no copies of the documents were forthcoming.’
As a result, he said: ‘There’s no way to ensure that the documents are complete, or that key information has not been withheld.’
Obeidallah then went on to quote CNN senior media reporter, Oliver Darcy, who said last week: ‘Musk has relied on a set of handpicked gatekeeping writers to cover the story, while keeping the raw materials — and context — locked away from the rest of the news media and broader public.’
‘That is why we need Congress to subpoena a complete set of the so-called Twitter Files as well as compel past Twitter chiefs and Musk to testify under oath on national TV,’ Obeidallah wrote.
‘Beyond that, the FBI’s leadership should testify after this fact-finding has been completed,’ he said, noting: ‘The bureau should welcome this opportunity, given the smears by certain GOP lawmakers such as Comer that “the FBI had its own ministry of propoganda.”
His op-ed came after Taibbi first released documents showing FBI agents coercing Twitter staff to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story.
CNN published an op-ed last week questioning the findings of the Twitter Files as Dean Obeidallah slammed Musk for releasing the documents to only a select group of people
But he questioned the legitimacy of the claims — laid bare in black and white in screengrabs of the documents for all to see.
Obeidallah asked why officials from ‘then President Donald Trump’s own administration’ would raise concerns about ‘then-candidate Joe Biden’s son Hunter?’
He also wrote that in response to the release of the documents, an FBI spokesperson told FOX News Digital: ‘The FBI regularly engages with private sector entities to provide information specific to identified foreign malign influence actor’s subversive, undeclared, covert of criminal activities.
‘Private sector entities independently make decisions about what, if any, action they take on their platforms and for their customers after the FBI has notified them,’ the spokesperson added.
‘In the end,’ Obeidallah wrote, ‘the Bureau may simply be protecting our nation from threats — as it should.
‘Or Musk could be trying to attract more users on the right by going after the FBI, given that some celebrities and others have left the platform since he took over in late October. Or there could be FBI wrongdoing.
‘But given that the pieces of information Musk has curated for public consumption have animated lawmakers in both parties, it’s time for the complete collection of Twitter Files to be released to Congress and the public.’
He concluded: ‘Americans need to know the truth about the FBI’s procedures when it comes to social media platforms — and we especially need to know the truth about Elon Musk’s Twitter files.’
NBC op-ed argues censorship could be a good thing as reporter mocks its findings
NBC News has remained relatively silent about the Twitter Files since they were first released last month.
But following Shellenberger’s report about the FBI working with Twitter executives to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story, one of its justice reporters, mocked the report.
Ryan J Reilly pointed to a specific part of the documents revealing that some of the information came from conservative social media site Parler and dubbed the documents: ‘The Parler Files.’
And in an op-ed a contributor for NBC News questioned in an op-ed on December 6 whether Elon Musk understood the tenants of free speech as he said the Twitter Files revealed nothing newsworthy.
NBC News even included a poll questioning whether Musk understood what free speech means.
An NBC justice reporter, Ryan J Reilly, mocked the recent release of the Twitter Files documenting how the FBI coerced Twitter content moderators to declare the Hunter Biden laptop story ‘Russian disinformation’
Musk has touted himself as a ‘free speech absolutist’ and has said the Twitter Files are proof that the platform, under his predecessors, was suppressing conservative voices.
But Paul Levinson, a professor of communication and media studies at Fordham University, wrote in the op-ed that the trove of documents ‘turned out to yield little new information.’
Paul Levinson, a professor of communication and media studies at Fordham University, wrote in the op-ed that the trove of documents ‘turned out to yield little new information
The op-ed included a poll in which users could vote on whether Musk understands the meaning of freedom of speech
Levinson then went on a diatribe about the First Amendment, noting that there are limits to the constitutional right.
He said that ‘as someone who has been close to an absolutist regarding freedom of speech and press — that the government should keep its hands and rules off those and other media of communication my falling for government intervention does not come easy.’
But he said the facts of free speech changed after the January 6 insurrection, when pro-Trump protestors stormed the Capitol in an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
‘Is their hateful speech something that warrants protection by the First Amendment? Are their words examples of “awful but lawful” communication that we in our democracy must tolerate?’ Levinson asks.
He concludes: ‘Musk’s self-proclaimed defenses of free speech sound good — most Americans remain, rightly, committed to this fundamental tenant of Constitutional freedom.
‘But such proclamations, as we saw with the Twitter Files debacle can also be manipulative.
‘There’s a reason his actions are also giving many of us pause,’ he said. ‘Do we tolerate too much?’
ABC News FAILS to publish anything about the Twitter Files, except for an AP story saying they are based on ‘anecdotes’
DailyMail.com could not find any stories ABC News, another major television outlet, did on the Twitter Files other than publishing a piece written by the Associated Press.
That analysis slams the reports as being ‘largely based on anecdotes about a handful of high-profile accounts’ noting the ‘tweets don’t reveal numbers about the scale of suspensions, and which views were more likely to be affected.’
The journalists then go on to question Musk’s commitment of freedom of speech.
‘Calling himself a free-speech absolutist’ Musk has said he wants to allow all content that’s legally permissible on Twitter, but also that he wants to downgrade negative and hateful posts,’ they write.
Instead of removing what they call ‘toxic content,’ the journalists say ‘Musk’s call for “freedom of speech, not freedom of reach” suggests Twitter may leave such content up without recommending it or amplifying it to other users.
‘But cutting out most of Twitter’s policy-making executives and outside advisers, Musk appears to be the arbiter of what crosses the line.’
ABC News has only published an Associated Press article about the Twitter Files
‘It’s about to get weird:’ New York Times published only one story on Twitter Files
The New York Times has only published one article on the Twitter Files since they were first released earlier this month.
That article takes a very diplomatic approach to reporting on the damning documents, as journalist Michael M Grynbaum discussed people’s positive and negative reactions to the information Matt Taibbi was revealing.
‘Mr. Musk and Mr. Taibbi framed the exchanges as evidence of rank censorship and pernicious influence by liberals,’ he wrote.
‘Many others — even some ardent Twitter critics — were less impressed, saying the exchanges merely showed a group of executives earnestly debating how to deal with an unconfirmed news report that was based on information that appeared to be Hunter Biden’s.’
The New York Times also only published one article discussing the controversy over the release of the Twitter Files
Grynbaum then notes that the Times had reached out to Musk for copies of the documents ‘but did not receive a response.’
He concludes by writing: ‘Perhaps the only universally accepted takeaway from the release of the Twitter Files was a sentiment that Mr. Taibbi himself expressed, in a headline on his Substack page that offered a preview of his upcoming post.’
‘Note to readers: It’s about to get weird in here.’