Media ignores Twitter Files story of Big Tech & Big Government surveillance

The Twitter Files story, have you heard of it?

It’s unlikely that you have because the liberal mainstream media has suppressed, if not ignored, the story altogether. Several independent journalists, such as former Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibbi, former New York Times editorial board writer Bari Weiss, and book author Michael Shellenberger, have reported on the files that Twitter shared with them about the Big Tech corporation’s censorship efforts.

It is public knowledge that, when Tesla founder Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion, he said that he would open the books and reveal many of its secrets to the public. He seemingly trolled the Left and mainstream media when he arrived at Twitter’s headquarters in the Bay Area by carrying in a sink and posted on Twitter, “Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!”

Musk’s willingness to be transparent about Twitter’s past was highlighted during a recent interview with a BBC reporter named James Clayton. Clayton gave a meandering statement disguised as a question, which statement claimed that hate speech is not being policed well enough under Musk’s leadership. Musk resisted Clayton’s claim and asked for the reporter to provide one example of hate speech that he recently saw on Twitter, to which Clayton did not provide an example.

Musk said, “I’m asking for one example and you can’t give a single one. Then I say, sir, that you don’t know what you are talking about.” Musk added, “You cannot give me a single example of hateful content, not even one tweet. And yet you claimed that hateful content was high. That is false, you just lied.”

Clayton appeared to be befuddled and unable to come up with a direct answer. Ultimately, he did not give an example of hate speech to answer Musk’s question.

Back to the Twitter Files. What did journalists find out from digging through the Big Tech platform’s files?

Taibbi wrote that Twitter worked in cooperation with federal government agencies (i.e. Big Government) such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and others. Particularly, the requests to censor tweets that were most likely to be honored or followed had come from Democratic Party officials, like President Joe Biden’s office. He also reported about the influence of a labyrinth of so-called “disinformation” experts, called Hamilton 68, which promoted the now-debunked “Russiagate” hoax on Twitter while suppressing contrary opinions.

Weiss noted that Twitter “Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users.” Twitter denied that it created blacklists, but many on its blacklists were conservative figures, like radio host Dan Bongino and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (who argued against COVID-19 lockdown policies).

Shellenberger reported about the FBI and intelligence agencies cooperated in an “organized effort by representatives of the intelligence community (IC), aimed at senior executives at news and social media companies, to discredit leaked information about Hunter Biden before and after it was published.”

Yet, the mainstream media has been highly critical of the Twitter Files because it exposes their preference for Big Tech censorship on social media platforms like Twitter. Instead, the media rails against these journalists in lieu of reporting the facts.

Here is a list of articles critical of the Twitter Files:

• NPR: Elon Musk is using the Twitter Files to discredit foes and push conspiracy theories
• NBC News: Elon Musk promotes release of internal Twitter documents rehashing platform’s block of Hunter Biden story
• The Atlantic: Elon Musk’s Twitter Files Are Bait

As you can see, the mainstream media is zeroing in on Twitter for not toeing the party line.

Also, these journalists were not solely criticized by the mainstream media, but also by Democratic Party politicians. Both Taibbi and Shellenberger were grilled in a House committee hearing by Democratic Party lawmakers. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, a Democrat representing a Houston, Texas district, repeatedly badgered Taibbi to reveal his source for the Twitter Files reporting.

Taibbi told Garcia, “I can’t give it to you, unfortunately, because this is a question of sourcing, and I’m a journalist. I don’t reveal my sources.”

Taibbi was correct to defend his constitutional right to protect his sources as a journalist, but Garcia continued to press him to reveal his source. She asked, “So you’re not going to tell us when Musk first approached you?”

To which Taibbi again reminded Garcia, “Again, congresswoman, you’re asking a journalist to reveal a source.”

Shellenberger faced similar antagonistic questions and statements from Democrats during the same hearing.

These three independent journalists are no conservatives, by any stretch of the imagination, but they have journalistic integrity to stand up to Big Tech, Big Government, and the mainstream media.

All in all, the Twitter Files exposed the mainstream media as political acolytes of the Democratic Party who loved Twitter before Musk took over. Now with Musk opening up the Big Tech platform’s files, which detail collusion and cooperation between Twitter, the media, and Big Government, the media willingly ignores and suppresses the story altogether.

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