What Happened to Matt Taibbi? (w/ Ben Cohen)

The one-time investigative reporter has been pushing White House spin on Russia, what gives?

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It would be easy enough to ignore

Matt Taibbi

, who has spent more than a few years now pursuing junk reporting. But with the onetime legacy journalist-turned-conservative-influencer pushing the new Russia storyline crafted by the White House, I reached out to

Ben Cohen

to help explain what’s happening. (If Taibbi were screaming into a tabloid at the grocery store, rather than a government megaphone, we may not be here, so for that I am grateful.)

Cohen’s been doing some great reporting recently over at The Banter on not just what Taibbi has been whiffing on, but *how* he got it wrong. I’ve found this especially interesting because Taibbi’s flops offer a deeper look into how conspiracy-theory style reporting (which is as old as The Swamp itself) operates in picking out and dissecting select storylines while ignoring pertinent (and easily accessible) information which clearly undercuts or negates the overarching Narrative.

In short, Russia helped Trump in 2016. For the deeper read, I’d recommend the very excellent Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russian interference in the 2016 campaign.

And a giant tip of the 10-gallon hat to Russia investigation afficionado Uri Berliner, who peaked my interest in Ben’s recent reporting on Taibbi. Berliner, who used to work on the business desk at NPR wrote a diatribe against NPR in large part accusing their reporters of flopping on the Trump Russia coverage. As someone who covered Trump-Russia extensively, first at CNN and later at The Associated Press, I was surprised to see Berliner flop his 2024 attack. It was a big, complicated and deeply important story, which Berliner got wrong.

Recommend the watch/listen, it’s colorful, a bit more colorful than this write-up.

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