The Sanctity Of Journalism Is Enshrined In The…?

I’m seeing a lot of tweets today that imply what Matt Taibbi has been doing with Elon Musk is “journalism” and therefore discussion of it should track with discussions of journalism (e.g., as to revealing sources). In fact, Musk is a known unreliable source who gave Taibbi...

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 12, 2023

Well, yeah, Taibbi sucks.

...and all of this has been proven. Musk withheld internal data from Taibbi that had previously been reported on by The Guardian and showed a systemic *far-right* bias at Twitter.

And Taibbi was *repeatedly* caught framing his narratives to please Musk and his Substack audience.

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 12, 2023

But journalists are basically self-regulating, and they circle the wagons at the first hint of criticism of what constitutes a “journalist.” Heaven forbid they should ever engage the question, except to praise one if their own and bask in the reflection of the glory they shower on the latest prize-winner.

...is obligated to treat as journalism that which in its very parameters rejects journalism. To be clear, a journalist can move between journalistic and non-journalistic projects; many is the journalist who’s written fiction or poetry or memoir instead of any genre of journalism.

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 12, 2023

Hell, Jeff Gerth just finished a gig writing unadulterated bullshit for CJR.

...around data for the sake of pleasing an audience; stop ignoring other journalists and subject matter experts when they issue corrections on his reporting; stop appearing on networks that are political propaganda organs rather than legitimate news organizations. Last night...

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 12, 2023

If Gerth was a lawyer and hadn’t lost his license for Whitewater he’d be considered an ambulance chaser, not writing for Harvard Law Review. Gerth will return to journalism when Taibbi does: half-past never. But he’s already returned. He has the CJR imprimatur! Sorry, Matt! Maybe if you had the NYT in your resume! 

Matt Taibbi has been a journalist long enough to know the difference between getting an exclusive and being a corporate tool.

And he’s been a journalist long enough to know that his “reporting” on Russia was repeatedly filled with Kremlin propaganda and false statements of fact.

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 12, 2023

The problem is not that Taibbi is an illegitimate journalist.

He chose the latter, and now he can’t live with his decision, so everyone else must be smeared: critics of Twitter; House Democrats; journalists who lost respect for him; experts on the Trump-Russia scandal who’ve repeatedly called out his lies; onetime admirers who turned away.

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 12, 2023

The problem is that journalists refuse to police themselves and declare people like Taibbi (or all of FoxNews) illegitimate clowns.

As with every invented scandal on the right—which is more or less all that social media has time to deal with on a daily basis—the outrage from the Taibbi camp is just a massively disingenuous waste of time based on false pretenses, frames and presumptions. But it’ll still trend.

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 12, 2023

60 years ago medical malpractice suits were as rare as hen’s teeth because doctors refused to testify against doctors. Without expert witnesses you can’t take a malpractice claim to court. Doctors finally realized they needed the regulation (such as it is) of malpractice cases.

During Obama’s tenure journalists actually stood up for the “sanctity” of journalism, insisting FoxNews keep its seat in the Press Briefing Room. Today I expect they would still buy Murdoch’s absurd argument that FoxNews has a “news” side and an “opinion” side, and one doesn’t affect the other (even though Fox admits its troubles started when it accurately called Arizona for Biden). Or they’d just rather the question never come up. Regardless, Doocy must stay because journalism must be protected!

But if what Peter Doocy does is journalism because he works for FoxNews, then what the ever/living fuck is “journalism” and why isn’t the MSM unashamedly promoting the Twitter files as news?

God forbid the reporters who go on CNN and MSNBC acknowledge, even now, that FoxNews after all is not to be trusted when they say it’s raining outside, even though you can see it through the window. Because then they’d have to opine on “journalism” and just what the hell it is, and only Howard Kurtz and CJR are allowed to do that. Or occasionally David Folkenflik, but he’s on NPR and nobody pays attention to them.

What a self-serving racket.