Matt Taibbi: How the Left Lost Its Mind and Legacy Media Its Audience

07/26/23 • 56 min

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Before Matt Taibbi was sparring with Democratic members of Congress on Capitol Hill earlier this year over the Twitter Files, he was a darling of the progressive left, appearing regularly on shows like Democracy Now! and others hosted by Bill Moyers and Rachel Maddow.

Though he was always a fierce critic of the Democratic establishment, the rise of Donald Trump suddenly meant that anyone nominally left of center—including progressive journalists like Taibbi—was expected to support Hillary Clinton unconditionally. So when he attacked her as a sellout, argued that the Russiagate narrative was mostly bullshit, and equated the manipulative tactics of right and left media personalities, progressives gave him the cold shoulder. Elected Democrats started treating him like a puppet of the right.

In 2020, Taibbi started publishing his work on Substack and quickly became one of the platform's most popular writers, earning far more than he ever did at Rolling Stone, where he had been chief political reporter. He became even more of a pariah by publishing exhaustive reports that documented how the government sought to control what was said on Twitter about COVID-19 and efforts by Russia to influence U.S. elections. Congressional Democrats unconvincingly pilloried him as a fake journalist, an apologist for Vladimir Putin, and a stooge for Elon Musk.

I caught up with Taibbi at FreedomFest, an annual gathering held this year in Memphis, to talk about the new challenges to free speech, why legacy media is dying, and how identity politics are poisoning political discourse.

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Previous Episode

Matt Ridley: Why Did Anthony Fauci et al. Suppress the Lab Leak Theory?

This is the audio version of The Reason Livestream, which takes place every Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern.

A recent House of Representatives committee report entitled "The Proximal Origin of a Cover-Up" exposes how Anthony Fauci and other leading government officials pressured researchers and the media into dismissing the COVID lab leak theory.

Acclaimed science writer Matt Ridley, co-author with Alina Chan of Viral: The Search for Origin of Covid-19, explains how the interference played out and why it matters to the future of medicine, politics, and an open society.

The post Matt Ridley: Why Did Anthony Fauci et al. Suppress the Lab Leak Theory? appeared first on Reason.com.

Next Episode

Jean Twenge and Elizabeth Nolan Brown: What Do Millennials Want?

Today's episode is an audio version of The Reason Livestream, which takes place every Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern on Reason's YouTube channel.

A recent poll found that 44 percent of Millennials want to criminalize misgendering people, showcasing a censorial attitude that has been building among some young people for years. Many Millennials also feel left behind economically, especially compared to baby boomers and Gen Xers.

Can Millennials and boomers ever get along? Or are they creating a generational gap every bit as vast as the one between boomers and their parents?

Today's guests are Reason Senior Editor Elizabeth Nolan Brown, who reported on the poll and writes about generational issues, and psychologist Jean Twenge, whose new book is Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents–and What They Mean for America's Future.

We cover a lot of ground in this conversation, including the central role of technology in changing how we live and how we interact with people younger and older than us.

The post Jean Twenge and Elizabeth Nolan Brown: What Do Millennials Want? appeared first on Reason.com.