Likely A Worthwhile Endeavor – Matt Taibbi Looking for Research Help
February 12, 2023 | Sundance | 113 Comments
Independent journalist Matt Taibbi is looking for some additional research assistance [SEE HERE]. Specifically, after going a little deeper on the Twitter Files, Taibbi appears to be recognizing the visibility of the Fourth Branch of Government. He now needs to package the truth of it, in a way his former tribe will accept.
As a consequence, Taibbi is looking for (1) a reporter or academic with experience researching government contracts, and/or the funding of NGOs or academic research institutions; and (2) an infographics designer, preferably with experience in areas like ecosystem mapping.
Matt Taibbi’s request for research assistants and others…anon that mentions Smith-Mundt, might be right up your ally (he obviously doesnt know Obama changed the law)
I started working on the #TwitterFiles months ago in the hope of answering a question about whether or not the government was teaming up with private platforms to censor political content. The answer quickly proved a decisive yes, but I’ve since run into a larger, more troubling problem that’s going torequire many more person-hours and digging to understand.
For a one-time project we’re aiming to publish in March, Racket needs a hand. We’re looking for the following:
— a reporter or academic with experience researching government contracts, and/or the funding of NGOs or academic research institutions
— an infographics designer, preferably with experience in areas like ecosystem mapping
Though we already have an excellent FOIA writer, experience in that area could be a plus.
If you have other skills in mining publicly available information, you could be a fit for the project.
Applicants should write to racketnews@protonmail.com. This is not volunteer work — we pay — but it is temporary.
What’s the job? Assignments will vary, and you’d be working under an editor (not me), but roughly: we’re trying tomap a new wing of the U.S. government’s propagandaapparatus that popped into view thanks to the Twitter Files.
State-directed censorship is scary, but themore disturbing activitywe’re seeing inside companies like Twitter involves what you might call “offensive” information operations, a type of aggressive official messaging that all governments practice but is supposed to be restricted by law in the United States.
For decades, our government at least loosely complied with legislation like theSmith-Mundt Act(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith%E2%80%93Mundt_Act),
which prohibits aiming at the domestic population any official propaganda “intended for foreign audiences.”
However, gloves came off in recent years.
For decades, our government at least loosely complied with legislation like the Smith-Mundt Act, which prohibits aiming at the domestic population any official propaganda “intended for foreign audiences.” However, gloves came off in recent years.
In a remarkably short time since the end of the Obama presidency, the U.S. government has funded an elaborate network of NGOs and think-tanks whose researchers call themselves independent “disinformation experts.” They describe their posture as defensive — merely “tracking” or “countering” foreign disinformation — but in truth they aggressively court both the domestic news media and platforms like Twitter, often becoming both the sources for news stories and/or the referring authorities for censorship requests.
The end result has been relentless censorship of, and mountains of (often deceptive) state-sponsored propaganda about, legitimate American political activity. In the Twitter Files we see correspondence from state agencies and state-sponsored research entities describing everything from support of the Free Palestine movement to opposition to vaccine passports as illicit foreign propaganda. Some of this messaging devolves into outright smear campaigns, with efforts to denounce the organic #WalkAway hashtag as a Russian “psychological operation” serving as a particularly lurid example. The Hamilton 68 story (about which more is coming) hints at this dynamic. The irony is the entire field of “disinformation studies” itself has the features of an inorganic astroturfing operation…
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2023/02/12/likely-a-worthwhile-endeavor-matt-taibbi-looking-for-research-help/