A little over a week ago, when the New York Times joined European newspapers to ask in a letter to withdraw the American accusations against Julian Assange, drew attention it was a decision made by publisher AG Sulzberger “without the involvement of the Editorial Office”.
Newsroom that disclosed that its editors did not participate —unlike the European ones. And that published the news of the letter with a critical bias to Assange, highlighting his subsequent actions against the Democratic Party, in the 2016 campaign.
‘RIGHT-WING NARRATIVES’
This week, with the first two reports in the series dubbed The Twitter Files, by Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss, with support from Elon Musk, it was also journalists who reacted negatively to the revelations of favoring the Democratic Party.
Taibbi, formerly of Rolling Stone magazine, and Weiss, formerly of the NYT, are journalists who swapped newsrooms, where they felt uncomfortable, he more to the left, she more to the right, and established newsletters with great repercussions on Substack.
Taibbi was the first to publish in the series and be attacked, by a presenter of the pro-democracy MSNBC, saying: “Imagine volunteering to do public relations for the richest man in the world, in the service of right-wing narratives, and pretending to be questioning power”.
Little was said in the United States of the content of that first report — which detailed how the platform’s then executives decided to suppress the New York Post’s revelations about Hunter’s laptop, son of Joe Biden, days before the 2020 election.
The almost unique repercussion was an attack on Taibbi, who even tried to joke: “I look forward to reading all the tweets complaining about ‘PR for the richest man in the world’ and seeing how many of them published stories for anonymous sources from the FBI, CIA, Pentagon, White House”.
THE second report, by Weissdetailed the practice of “visibility filtering” by Twitter, suppressing the reach of accounts without warning, and the existence even of “blacklists”, lists covering mainly right-wing profiles such as Libs of TikTok🇧🇷
Again, the backlash focused on Weiss, not what she reported, with the news of widespread pressure, online, for her investigation by the regulatory agency FTC for the alleged crime of accessing information from Twitter users.
Efforts against the series didn’t just come from Weiss and Taibbi’s colleagues. As she discovered and he disclosed, the data the two had been having access to was being “filtered” by Twitter’s own lawyer, Jim Baker, “Former FBI Attorney General🇧🇷
“The discovery that Baker was reviewing The Twitter Files surprised everyone, to say the least,” wrote Taibbi. “Elon Musk acted quickly on Baker’s ‘exit’.” And Weiss warned that the third chapter of the “archives” is on the way.
BEZOS SELLS
Another American technology billionaire, Jeff Bezos, from Amazon, is facing problems with the Washington Post, which he acquired in 2013 and which he seems to be losing interest in – after the departure of editor Martin Baron, questioned by the Newsroom.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Bezos “authorized” the sale of Arc publishing software, one of his contributions to WaPo. The paper has lost half a million subscribers this year, according to the WSJ.
With a wealth of experience honed over 4+ years in journalism, I bring a seasoned voice to the world of news. Currently, I work as a freelance writer and editor, always seeking new opportunities to tell compelling stories in the field of world news.
