On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Matt Taibbi, one of the reporters of the Twitter files, criticized the lack of reaction to the files from groups that claim to defend free speech and people on the left, who he said are “thinking about this in partisan terms.”
Host Tucker Carlson asked, [relevant exchange begins around 2:35] “[T]here are a lot of different nonprofit organizations that purport to defend free speech on behalf of journalists…have any of them weighed in on this and raised holy hell?”
Taibbi responded, “No. And that’s been a profound disappointment. For me personally, I gave to the ACLU for years. I’m one of those sort of dyed-in-the-wool liberals and grew up that way. I’m deeply disappointed. I think a lot of people who are sort of politically on that side of the aisle are missing the boat on this. They don’t understand the gravity of the situation. They’re thinking about this in partisan terms. It’s not a partisan story. This is a story about the architecture of the intelligence community and law enforcement getting its hands on speech and on the ability of people to communicate with one another through platforms like Twitter and Facebook. And they’re doing this in a very profound way, much more serious than I thought at the beginning of this story.”
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