Responding to Matt Taibbi's; Twitter Files Thread: The Spies Who Loved Twitter
All the FBI's, all the ultimata. trying to keep everyone on the same side...
Matt Taibbi has posted his take on the twitter files via substack - which seems like a pretty good format, so instead of trying to cram everything there is to be said about what he writes, into a sequence of tweets, I’m going to write my response here on substack! I hope people can manage to read it, you just have to enter your email address to sign up.
To start off with, the context of all of this is because of the central nature of the democratic process itself, to the interests of American governmental agencies. The White House does not want election interference, and so the FBI are tasked with the the process of ensuring the sanctity of American democracy - something important for faith in government, and pivotal in enabling the ability to govern. Without free and fair elections, erosion in the faith of government could have far reaching implications in terms of developing and implementing policy, along with how these actions of government are received and perceived by the public. The FBI, as a result, have an important job to do, on behalf of the White House, to police the internet, to rout out foreign and domestic interference, and basically end up acting as a free speech moderation force, by their interaction with social media platforms such as twitter, directing moderation prerogatives, and sometimes more directly seeking special treatment for their own accounts, and the accounts of individuals that fall foul of the scrutinising attention of this Big-Brother’esque agency.
The twitter files give journalists unprecedented access to some of the communications that took place between various governmental agencies including the FBI, to affect the way that twitter operates, giving us a direct view into the American Governments influence of free speech. Through these disclosures, we as journalists, and the public at large, can understand the position of these governmental agencies, under direction from central government; and use this understanding to both cooperate with, and scrutinise these influential agencies. To hold them to account when they overstep the mark of what can be deemed in the public’s interest, and to ensure the essential moral directives they issue (the stated desires towards the “direction moving forwards”) and how these precedents can be best assessed in order to both enact checks and balances, and also, to ensure the justifiable desires and priorities of government can be upheld.
It is important when addressing such sensitive topics to remain a basic sense of impartiality, to neither rile against, or act persistently at the behest of governmental agendas. As journalists, we must both fulfil a public service to speak to issues of overreach, without essentially becoming problematic - such that caveating the following communications in this way are efforts taken to be responsible, as well as both in some way indemnifying critiques from ruffling feathers, and communicating clearly this delicate situation to the readers, in order that they not be concerned that through fear, that journalists will blindly echo the position of the state department, and have no balls in confronting abuse of power - but at the same time, reassuring government that depends on journalistic integrity to ensure the continued smooth function of their agencies, and the achievement of their objectives and own priorities, so that journalism itself does not pose to be a problem. with that said, lets dive into Matt Taibbi’s Twitter Files, and see what he has managed to uncover, with the hope to shed some extra perspective on these discoveries. The Original can be found here, for anyone reading along;
