I think anyone who isn’t captured by right wing groupthink knows The Free Press is disingenuous crap but it’s good to have the details spelled out in cases like this.
What RDR has gone through reminds me of those creation science advocates who level accusations against evolutionary biologists, geologists and the like.
Reading TFP was my attempt at balancing my news/info diet and I am now looking elsewhere after this. And they even added insult to injury by recently interviewing Shellenberger. Really disappointed in them. Thank you for your efforts!
TFP is a double misnomer. It isn’t “free” when it censors articles to suit its ideology. It is also not fit to be labelled “press” when it places said ideological bent above the need for truth and accuracy.
In this panel discussion from the 2024 election, Taibbi is making a case for Trump along these lines: we know the Democrats are evil, whereas at least the Republicans are an unknown quantity on critical questions. His go-to example is the Democrats’ fervent pursuit of a censorship state. (“We know how the Democrats feel about that, I mean they’re 100% committed to you know a full throttle version of as much control as they can get over the internet, over you know media distribution and all those things.”) Expanding on thsi ‘better the devil you don’t know’ logic later in the conversation, he says “in the censorship realm the Department of Defense has a new thing called like the Office of Narrative Intelligence or something..it’s kind of like the Republican answer to the Stanford based system…” The critical difference, Taibbi goes on to explain, is that these efforts will be directed externally - a ‘Death Star like force around the world that you know fixed elections and assassinated people but not here right. So I think for a lot of Trump voters is yes the CIA the Pentagon they do all kinds of terrible things but they never cross the line into meddling with domestic politics.” This implied equivalence between the non-governmental SIO’s mundane and transparent monitoring of online misinformation and the Pentagon’s election rigging and assassinations is a window into Taibbi’s detachment from reality — and bear in the mind that his conclusion about who one should vote for pivots on this idiocy. https://youtu.be/O0UZtuoiwZw?si=7tYvkKzJrWpWsb7u&t=1638
This is very disappointing, as I subscribe to the Free Press and like much of its reporting. However, I've never had a good feeling about the whole Twitter files initiative and related reporting about a 'censorship industrial complex'.
Renee, thank you for providing yet more clarification on just what a shill and a rag the so-called Free Press has become.
I was one of the people who originally signed on to a paid subscription to what was then called "Bari Weiss' Common Sense" when it debuted back around 2021. As someone who has always identified as a lefty/liberal kind of person, the Trump era had ironically got me seeking out more reasonable right-leaning types (I'm still a diehard supporter of The Bulwark).
Furthermore, with Trump having been temporarily vanquished, there was clearly a problem on my side of the cultural divide that merited attention. The online left was becoming disturbingly illiberal and censorious. What were once universalist liberal values were being replaced by a coercive imposition of white guilt, racial essentialism, and character assassination based on the thinnest of pretexts. People seemed to be losing their minds in a near mass hysterical obsession with race, and political correctness on steroids.
But it wasn't too long before I found myself questioning my newfound alliance. The first indication was the comment section after Weiss enthusiastically endorsed getting vaccinated against COVID. Yikes. Suddenly having the conversation turn from bashing obnoxious cultural authoritarians to how they couldn't believe Weiss was endorsing Big Pharma's death injection was sobering, to say the least.
That's when I began to notice a disturbing amount of Trump apologia on the site. Furthermore, while Weiss originally had a very antagonistic relationship toward Glen Greenwald, she started to seem much more friendly and amenable to the Russia denialism being pushed by him and his new buddy Matt Taibbi. It was becoming clearer all the time that the site was being captured by a certain audience.
I expected, at the very least, a site that was committed enough to intellectual honesty that it clearly saw through Trumpist propaganda. I was unfortunately very much mistaken. All of the gratuitous shots at the left that once seemed like the price to be paid for a much-needed, legitimate, fair critique of its current direction, suddenly seemed to become more the point.
What's more, as the excesses of "wokeness" clearly began to subside, the Free Press continued to act as if the problem were as acute as ever. Instead of turning their attention to a growing threat of Trump's re-emergence, they were at best ambivalent and at worst sympathetic to Trump's garbage claims of being victimized by political persecution. More and more people outright supportive of Trump began to appear in its pages.
And then came the moment when Weiss was contracted by Elon Musk—along with others of her ilk—to validate Musk's claims of coercion by the government (mostly the Biden administration) through a carefully selected set of documents, giving rise to the risible "Twitter files" non-scandal of alleged censorship (in the process at least restoring "Reason" Magazine's reputation for being glibertarian, right-wing apologists).
I don't remember exactly when I decided I'd had it with TFP, but whenever it was, it was probably far too late. The single most grave threat to American democracy and our place in the world order was apparently not worth spending much time discussing when there were still obscure stories of transgender overreach to report on, or people still with axes to grind over their inglorious exits from mainstream media.
This is precisely why people like Andrew Sullivan were caught by surprise over The Free Press's virtual disregard for Trump's campaign of terror against American minorities. He honestly still had higher expectations of them at that point. If only he'd been paying real attention instead of just commiserating with Weiss over their (admittedly horrible) treatment by their bosses and colleagues at the NYT, he might have known what to expect.
Instead, the same persecution complex that blinded Weiss to the threats from the right blinded Sullivan from seeing that these would-be crusaders for free speech weren't interested in documenting actual abuses of power by the government—so long as they were committed by the same people they stupidly perceived as being their champions, due to their willingness to "own" their progressive enemies.
I suppose the Free Press was always doomed to slide into being a shill for fascists. The Substack platform and independent media, whatever its upsides, is at least as vulnerable to audience capture and bias as their more traditional counterparts. People aren't just channel surfing—they're actively paying to be told what they want to hear on an a-la-carte basis.
But I stopped subscribing years ago, and this entirely unsurprising incident is emblematic of why.
You’ll have to be more specific. You pay for the Martyr Made Holocaust denier Substack. So I’m not surprised a call for factual accuracy is hard for you to understand.
I think anyone who isn’t captured by right wing groupthink knows The Free Press is disingenuous crap but it’s good to have the details spelled out in cases like this.
What RDR has gone through reminds me of those creation science advocates who level accusations against evolutionary biologists, geologists and the like.
Yikes! That certainly calls into question the use of the word "free" in their name.
It's magat as f-ck, therefore the Orwellian name.
Reading TFP was my attempt at balancing my news/info diet and I am now looking elsewhere after this. And they even added insult to injury by recently interviewing Shellenberger. Really disappointed in them. Thank you for your efforts!
TFP is a double misnomer. It isn’t “free” when it censors articles to suit its ideology. It is also not fit to be labelled “press” when it places said ideological bent above the need for truth and accuracy.
Standing your ground! Take a bow. Onward. Thanks.
In this panel discussion from the 2024 election, Taibbi is making a case for Trump along these lines: we know the Democrats are evil, whereas at least the Republicans are an unknown quantity on critical questions. His go-to example is the Democrats’ fervent pursuit of a censorship state. (“We know how the Democrats feel about that, I mean they’re 100% committed to you know a full throttle version of as much control as they can get over the internet, over you know media distribution and all those things.”) Expanding on thsi ‘better the devil you don’t know’ logic later in the conversation, he says “in the censorship realm the Department of Defense has a new thing called like the Office of Narrative Intelligence or something..it’s kind of like the Republican answer to the Stanford based system…” The critical difference, Taibbi goes on to explain, is that these efforts will be directed externally - a ‘Death Star like force around the world that you know fixed elections and assassinated people but not here right. So I think for a lot of Trump voters is yes the CIA the Pentagon they do all kinds of terrible things but they never cross the line into meddling with domestic politics.” This implied equivalence between the non-governmental SIO’s mundane and transparent monitoring of online misinformation and the Pentagon’s election rigging and assassinations is a window into Taibbi’s detachment from reality — and bear in the mind that his conclusion about who one should vote for pivots on this idiocy. https://youtu.be/O0UZtuoiwZw?si=7tYvkKzJrWpWsb7u&t=1638
God, he's never sounded so stupid. How sad that Taibbi's sunk this low.
This is very disappointing, as I subscribe to the Free Press and like much of its reporting. However, I've never had a good feeling about the whole Twitter files initiative and related reporting about a 'censorship industrial complex'.
Renee, thank you for providing yet more clarification on just what a shill and a rag the so-called Free Press has become.
I was one of the people who originally signed on to a paid subscription to what was then called "Bari Weiss' Common Sense" when it debuted back around 2021. As someone who has always identified as a lefty/liberal kind of person, the Trump era had ironically got me seeking out more reasonable right-leaning types (I'm still a diehard supporter of The Bulwark).
Furthermore, with Trump having been temporarily vanquished, there was clearly a problem on my side of the cultural divide that merited attention. The online left was becoming disturbingly illiberal and censorious. What were once universalist liberal values were being replaced by a coercive imposition of white guilt, racial essentialism, and character assassination based on the thinnest of pretexts. People seemed to be losing their minds in a near mass hysterical obsession with race, and political correctness on steroids.
But it wasn't too long before I found myself questioning my newfound alliance. The first indication was the comment section after Weiss enthusiastically endorsed getting vaccinated against COVID. Yikes. Suddenly having the conversation turn from bashing obnoxious cultural authoritarians to how they couldn't believe Weiss was endorsing Big Pharma's death injection was sobering, to say the least.
That's when I began to notice a disturbing amount of Trump apologia on the site. Furthermore, while Weiss originally had a very antagonistic relationship toward Glen Greenwald, she started to seem much more friendly and amenable to the Russia denialism being pushed by him and his new buddy Matt Taibbi. It was becoming clearer all the time that the site was being captured by a certain audience.
I expected, at the very least, a site that was committed enough to intellectual honesty that it clearly saw through Trumpist propaganda. I was unfortunately very much mistaken. All of the gratuitous shots at the left that once seemed like the price to be paid for a much-needed, legitimate, fair critique of its current direction, suddenly seemed to become more the point.
What's more, as the excesses of "wokeness" clearly began to subside, the Free Press continued to act as if the problem were as acute as ever. Instead of turning their attention to a growing threat of Trump's re-emergence, they were at best ambivalent and at worst sympathetic to Trump's garbage claims of being victimized by political persecution. More and more people outright supportive of Trump began to appear in its pages.
And then came the moment when Weiss was contracted by Elon Musk—along with others of her ilk—to validate Musk's claims of coercion by the government (mostly the Biden administration) through a carefully selected set of documents, giving rise to the risible "Twitter files" non-scandal of alleged censorship (in the process at least restoring "Reason" Magazine's reputation for being glibertarian, right-wing apologists).
I don't remember exactly when I decided I'd had it with TFP, but whenever it was, it was probably far too late. The single most grave threat to American democracy and our place in the world order was apparently not worth spending much time discussing when there were still obscure stories of transgender overreach to report on, or people still with axes to grind over their inglorious exits from mainstream media.
This is precisely why people like Andrew Sullivan were caught by surprise over The Free Press's virtual disregard for Trump's campaign of terror against American minorities. He honestly still had higher expectations of them at that point. If only he'd been paying real attention instead of just commiserating with Weiss over their (admittedly horrible) treatment by their bosses and colleagues at the NYT, he might have known what to expect.
Instead, the same persecution complex that blinded Weiss to the threats from the right blinded Sullivan from seeing that these would-be crusaders for free speech weren't interested in documenting actual abuses of power by the government—so long as they were committed by the same people they stupidly perceived as being their champions, due to their willingness to "own" their progressive enemies.
I suppose the Free Press was always doomed to slide into being a shill for fascists. The Substack platform and independent media, whatever its upsides, is at least as vulnerable to audience capture and bias as their more traditional counterparts. People aren't just channel surfing—they're actively paying to be told what they want to hear on an a-la-carte basis.
But I stopped subscribing years ago, and this entirely unsurprising incident is emblematic of why.
You’ll have to be more specific. You pay for the Martyr Made Holocaust denier Substack. So I’m not surprised a call for factual accuracy is hard for you to understand.
Refute them, then.
You pay a Holocaust denier to lie to you.
Awwww, but a post ago they were "trivially refutable"!
Bye.
You really can't come up with something better than "No, you are"?