Ranking Democrat Accuses ‘Twitter Files’ Reporters of Endangering Employees by Exposing Censorship

Ari Blaff
·3 min read
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Representative Stacey Plaskett (D., Virgin Islands) ripped into Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger during a Thursday hearing on the Twitter Files, accusing the pair of journalists of endangering the lives of Twitter employees by exposing how the social-media platform partnered with various federal agencies to censor disfavored political views.

Plaskett, ranking member of the Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, used her allotted time during the first round of questioning to dismiss the witnesses’ concerns about the FBI and other federal agencies pressuring Twitter to take action against users who spread so-called “disinformation” on a variety of politically charged subjects. Instead of expressing outrage at the government’s role in censoring political speech, Plaskett attacked the witnesses for allegedly endangering Twitter employees by publishing their redacted internal communications.

“Mr. Chairman, I am not exaggerating when I say that you have called before you two witnesses who pose a direct threat to people who oppose them. It’s funny when people have to go through that? This is unacceptable,” Plaskett said, responding to laughter from committee chairman Jim Jordan.

Plaskett insisted that there was no “real evidence” of coordination between Twitter and the federal government and argued that the hundreds of emails revealed by Shellenberger and Taibbi are simply evidence of benign “content moderation” efforts.

Plaskett went on to cite the testimony of Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, who said during a previous committee hearing that he faced threats and online harassment after his role in censoring content at the behest of the FBI was exposed by the Twitter Files reporting.

Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D., Fl.) engaged in a similar line of questioning, arguing that “Being a Republican witness today certainly casts a cloud over your objectivity.”

Schultz went on to denounce Taibbi as “Elon Musk’s handpicked journalist.”

“Elon Musk spoon-fed you his cherry-picked information which you must have suspected promotes a slanted viewpoint or, at the very least, generates a right-wing conspiracy theory. You violated your own standard and you appear to have benefitted from it,” the Florida representative told Taibbi with a pointed finger.

Later in the hearing, Taibbi clarified that there were no conditions placed on his access to internal Twitter communications and that he unearthed censorship efforts targeting left-wing media outlets and users as well as right-wing organizations and individuals.

Just ahead of testifying before Congress, Matt Taibbi released a new installment of the Twitter Files revealing that Twitter had established a “Censorship-Industrial Complex” whereby agencies such as the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and NGOs including the Atlantic Council and National Endowment for Democracy regularly consulted with the social-media platform. According to the communications obtained by Taibbi, Twitter had a policy of censoring even “true” information that might lead to vaccine hesitancy.

Since the first installment of the Twitter Files was released in December 2022, investigative journalists have revealed that the social-media giant actively cooperated with federal law enforcement agencies and created secret “secret blacklists” targeting prominent conservative commentators.

The Select Committee was created in January to investigate alleged collusion between the private sector and arms of the federal government. The Subcommittee is chaired by Jim Jordan (R., Ohio).

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