Seriously who even reads any mainstream anything at this point? NYT or WSJ exist to line bird cages. The readership has to have an average age of 70+. It's over, the next gen doesn't care AT ALL .
There are quite a few of us with 70+ years under our belt who have known for awhile that the mainstream media are propaganda organs. I'm 74, and I figured it out several years ago. Now if only I could convince my 59-year-old sister to stop paying attention to NYT, WaPo, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, BBC etc.
Your sister isn't looking for the truth or an accurate accounting , she just wants to hear her favorite band "play the hits" even if it's total bullshit.
Arguably it’s just common sense, to believe the same nonsense your friends believe. It’s not like your knowing the truth will change the world one iota, after all.
It will just leave you with fewer friends!
Moral: If you want a happy life, stay away from red pills.
Well, I'll argue. Common sense would dictate a belief in facts as opposed to believing your "friends" nonsense. Moral: Following idiot "friends" for acceptance, while possibly great fun short term, is a sure road to ruin.
First, human psychology craves belief, i.e. the full emotional commitment to some ideas without (and maybe despite) data and logic. It is certainly easier, and more comforting, to attach yourself to some beliefs, instead of constantly seeking new information, and then re-evaluating your conclusions and opinions.
Second, we have large (and apparently growing) contingents of people who are emotionally fragile, especially on the left, where it is a new virtue. I was very disappointed during COVID to see how many friends became basket cases. And how many of them needed a reassuring authority (emphasis on authority) to tell them what to do. Their dedicated belief to the official narratives were the only way they could cope.
"WE FUCKED UP" in 96 point font above the fold is the only way the NYT will ever get me to turn to that rag for reliable information. The NYT has no journalistic standards (hasn't had for some time) and isn't today and in the future remotely concerned with informing anyone about anything.
A subscription to access the NYT archive for research purposes is a sound investment, however. The track record of their public lies from 2000 onwards is invaluable and essential reading. How long till NYT shit-cans or stealth edits the archive? Who knows?
All kudos to Matt for the moment. Matt (and Walter) still really need to re-calibrate their read of Obama and the Dems writ large from the WOT onwards. Obama was not, and never has been, one of the "good guys."
Obama embraced his role as the enthusiastic and amoral front for an era of truly epochal gang-fuckery of the American public from 2008 on - from the ACA, to Too Big To Fail, to the Security State Spying on the press, Congress, and the American public, Russiagate right up to the present. Matt's still way, way, way behind the curve on this stuff.
That said, Matt's work today is almost beyond reproach. Ditto Walter's. I'll be happily renewing my subscription to Racket. Commenters are great, too!
As the Durham report is now being criticized, and parsed, please read my 2022 assessment of the Durham "failure" to convict Michael Sussman of lying to the FBI, which seems to me now in August of 2025 to be both apt and germane. Critical feedback welcome!
"....Had Durham "won" the case against Michael Sussman he (Durham) would have provided the FBI with a plausible, jury-determined defense against future charges that senior FBI officials “knowingly” deployed Clinton crap as the predicate for the Alpha bank scam. A Durham victory would have allowed the FBI to claim that: “Sussman lied to us. He told us he was acting as a concerned citizen. The FBI was duped!” The jury just torched any such fiction."
"The jury in fact judged that Michael Sussman indeed had “Clinton campaign” tattooed on his forehead when he approached the FBI in 2016 as a self-described ‘concerned citizen.’ The jury judgment rendered all FBI claims that “Sussman deceived us” to be utterly implausible, and did so quickly and emphatically."
"The FBI and their allies now have to explain how a DC jury just determined that officials at the highest level in Obama's FBI in fact knew in 2016 they were using evidence supplied by a Clinton campaign lawyer as the predicate for an investigation into Clinton’s political opponent, and that these senior officials concealed this fact from the Chicago FBI agents charged with investigating the Clinton campaign's Alpha bank ‘evidence'. The jury also learned that the campaign paid their lawyer to hand deliver said evidence to a senior FBI official who happened to be his close friend James Baker. The Clinton campaign’s claims of "we didn’t know Sussman would go to the FBI" are immaterial at this point in the process. Given the campaign’s efforts to have the FBI and others credit campaign research as viable evidence of collusion raises real questions about the campaign’s claim that Sussman “went rogue” when he took the Clinton paid-for evidence to the FBI. Are we supposed to believe the HRC campaign didn’t want the FBI to investigate her opponent?"
"The most significant fact the jury learned is that HRC personally approved of the Alpha bank scam."
"The verdict just rendered will likely play a material role in any future prosecutions of individuals inside the FBI and the Justice department, and others, working to actively interfere in the 2016 election and undermine the administration of the 45th president of the United States."
"Durham has a reputation as one of the finest and most methodical prosecutors in America We’re seeing that now."
Durham's no dummy, he understood the limits of what he could accomplish. Durham's "loss" and the jury's verdict that the FBI understood completely that Sussman was acting as part of the HRC campaign renders all current denials in 2025 meaningless. A jury has already determined the FBI knew full well in September of 2016 that Sussman, a paid HRC lawyer, was funneling HRC oppo research to the FBI - and demanding the FBI's co-operation - which the FBI duly provided.
The above comment refers only to the Sussman trial.
To fully appreciate Durham's focus, we need to recall that Durham only prosecuted two individuals Michael Sussman and FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith. Just two, but consider the impact today.
Clinesmith, working for Comey, pleaded guilty in the US District Court for the District of Columbia to a false statement offense in 2020. Wapo in January of 2021 gloated that "The case against Clinesmith is the first and only criminal allegation to arise from U.S. Attorney John Durham's review of the FBI's Russia case."
Durham's two prosecutions actually succeeded in establishing beyond all doubt two critical facts about the FBI in 2016.
Durham first secured an admission from FBI attorney Clinesmith that he altered a document used to fraudulently obtain FISA warrants against Trump campaign staff.
Durham then secured a jury verdict in the Sussman trial that demolished all claims of FBI did not know that the FBI was in fact acting as arm of the HRC campaign in 2016.
FBI lawyers illegally altering documents to illegally obtain FISA warrants against HRC's opponant. FBI lawyers knowingly working with the Clinton campaign to falsely accuse HRC's opponent of working with Russia in 2016.
We owe Durham a ton of respect for the power and economy of his focus. Hope he gets the credit - coz he put the FBI's testicles squarely in the vice. Time to squeeze.
Right, but of course it wasn't a fuck up, it was intentional and malicious, just as supporting every war since 1935 is intentional and malicious. Revisionist history has buried how opposed the American People were to WWII and still are to every war.
I'd required them to add the words "ON PURPOSE" to your proposed headline, and then a long mea culpa about their decisions to lie on purpose and the faulty reasons why. That would help me, but probably not get me to read the rag again.
I quit right before Covid shutdown. All msm. Most peaceful summer in my older life. I didn’t even know about george Floyd until later—that’s how complete my blackout was. It’s still off. Removed myself from the Demwit cult not long after Biden was rolled in on a gurney.
My older siblings ( and some friends), who are of similar age continue to believe if it’s written in the NYTIMES or WAPO or heard on NPR it’s gospel. There is no hope for them ever seeing the light. I point them to Matt and others like Michael Shellenberger but they refuse to widen their horizons. Willful ignorance is a real thing.
I'm a boomer at 75 yo. I've never subscribed to a newspaper. I have not seen an alphabet newscast or local newscast since my 1984 divorce. Clinton was president for months before I even new what he looked like. Saw a pic of him and pants suit on the front of a mag at the grocery checkout line.
I'm a rural dweller that has never voted for a Dem, but found globalist like the Bush family a far cry from conservative. Obama's eight years brought the country to its knees.
I think that bad wrap the Boomers get certainly does not apply to me and other people I know - hard working, raising families of more hard working people who respect laws, pays bills and stay out of debt.
One can only hope the MSM dies off with the boomers, of which I am one. Nearly all the people, and family I know in my age group have swallowed the MSM bullshit and refuse to even consider any of the truth.
I am also 74 and I can tell you that the nearest MSM large metropolitan newspaper is a relentless leftist rag whose derangement syndrome equals the WSJ.
Isn’t it really just Dem and Dem-adjacent vs GOP and GOP- adjacent rather than age? My 38 and 41 year old kids probably have lifetime subscriptions to NYT etc. They think Matt along w every other “substacker” can’t get a job elsewhere. Feels hopeless.
I'm 87, all my 60+ year old Nieces and 30+ year old grand Nieces are professionals working in education or health care. They all "go" with the MSM and especially former Biden government, because the government is the actual source of their income. They are all married with children and homes and practicing reasonable Christians. My daughter, 46, is one of J. D. Vance's "cat ladies," never married, lives alone, a former serious Buddhist, now a "professional" yoga instructor -actually makes a decent living (in SoCal). Some weeks a year she travels the world attending trans dance festivals as a "musician" and dancer. She's a little further Left than the Nieces. My dearly departed, at 86, wonderful sister-in-law, was an avid fan of "The View." Who can figure women today? I voted Republican in 1960, and still do.
I think Walter Kirn said it best (from a very good 2023 interview) linked below:
“I have tried the case (of the MSM) and come to this conclusion for myself—that between the deceptiveness, the agenda-driven nature, and the social-media-oriented vapidity of the press, it is no longer a reliable source of information about the world. It’s a very good source of information about itself. If you wish to know who’s up and who’s down, who’s in and who’s out, who scored points and lost points, it’s a great scorecard. But if you’re looking to find out what’s going on, it’s a terrible one. In fact, it will actually conceal what’s going on in almost every respect.”
Very late Soviet. Official lies in the state paper that no one with a brain or not complicit still believes. Living in the USSA, you don’t know how lucky you are boy…
I worked with a Polish immigrant for years. He came here before the fall of the soviet union, and became a proud hardworking citizen. He told me that back in Poland everyone on his street would come out and sit on their front steps when the news came on, they all knew it was BS.
My friend I'm pretty damn close to retirement age myself. It's not a bash , it's the point that young people don't read the "papers" and believe it or not every year more of us at this part of the age spectrum will stop existing (which makes us poor readers)
We can't be blamed too much. We fucked up everything for generations to come, while turning ourselves into morbidly obese, human beach-balls.
COVID lockdowns were imposed to protect Boomer beach-balls who refused to make the effort get their BMIs below 30 and near 22. The Boomer response to the data was - "fuck the data, fuck the kids, fuck everyone, I NEED MY DING-DONGS, especially NOW when my self-loathing is peaking!!!"
BLAME the BOOMERS? Absolutely! How can we not? History certainly will. - nutless, amoral, "I've got mine" egotistical cowards who surrendered, for the most part, to the tyranny of lies and exploitation we're all enduring now.
I used to work with lots of Boomer teachers - the most loathsome were the ones who blamed the kids - I pointed out - the only ones getting paid to provide classrooms solutions - can't, or won't.
Didn't win me many friends among the Boomer bums, but my students were generally happy.
Born in '59 to squeak into the Boomer category. No one I knew ever imagined a national debt of 37 or so trillion dollars. It wasn't created nor wanted by your average hard working, middle class guy but a Cadre of Boomer shit heads got us here while gutting our manufacturing base. On our watch though, we should have been more aware and better informed and stopped it years ago. Perhaps we can make a multigenerational pact to do that now.
It's the overgeneralization I object to. Plenty of younger people are guilty of the same offenses.
My primary topic of interest is nutrition, so to your beachball point: something about the modern lifestyle is driving the obesity epidemic. Lifestyle factors tend to take years if not decades to manifest. So of course more older people look fat to you. Give the younger generations time, their inflationary days are approaching.
Fair points and you're right about trend lines. Changing behaviors quickly is easy with the right incentives (carrots and sticks) - happens easily in any structured setting.
RFK Jr. might be a loon (I don't think he is) but he's 100 percent right when observes there's no long-term revenue source like a sick child. I spent lots of time in social groups where being a fat-ass carried real penalties. My wife is more strident on these issues - nutrition, diet, exercise. I ran with our son to get his distances up and ensured he could swim like a fish.
We're far from perfect. Obesity is a real issue for a minority and can be managed successfully in many cases. Smoking, drinking "responsible" drug-taking - these are all choices. We didn't need lock downs, we needed people to look in the mirror and say - my lifestyle could put me in a box quick - I need to change. I can actually think of one tubbie who did. The rest just hid indoors and stuffed their faces. Sad.
But you're right 100 percent - the technology makes passivity a fatal choice - we need to be actively judicious about what we allow into our bodies and between our ears.
I don't see RFK as a loon. I was originally attracted to him as a candidate because his ideas on nutrition align with mine. It's a common anecdote in the low-carb community that you almost never get sick. I haven't had a cold since 2010. So I didn't think I needed the Covid jab, even assuming that it had any preventive effect at all.
Over many years, it's been shown that what you eat has a greater effect on your weight and overall health than exercise. Yet the conventional wisdom refuses to budge, thanks largely to regulatory capture.
'Changing behaviors quickly is easy with the right incentives (carrots and sticks)'
It's not easy to change dietary habits, especially not when all the economic incentives are for industry to create crap products, and for people to think they only need to take a pill to reverse the crap effects.
The self importance is stunning. Hey…ever heard of history? Maybe read some before arriving at this shallow conclusion about what one generation did or didn’t “fuck up…”
The Boomer Bums didn't have video games while growing up so of course they're loathsome Ding Dong eaters. Blaming the kids for not learning when presented with classroom solutions is the worst.
When the fish stinks - it starts at the head - as Boomers, we’ve generally set a horrible example - lazy, incurious teachers - incapable of connecting, and communicating with their unlucky charges. It’s the teacher’s main job to connect with each student as a person and invite them to “think.” For too many, the job is: “why can’t my students understand how lucky they are to have me? I was really made for greatness, instead I’m stuck with these dunces.” It’s like that.
Let's do the math, currently out of favor in education. With 30 students, a teacher could connect individually with each one for two minutes per hour and do nothing else. Not practical. So instead they speak extemp like first-time open microphone comics. This in a time when interesting, polished, and tested videos are available. Imagine if the "blab school" marms had been unionized?
Some cut our hair and became 'yuppies' and left the commune after the lazy ones wanted a 'fair share' of the cake. David Crosby was the only one not to visit a barber but times changed and he couldn't adapt. Being the last boomer, 1964, I liked some of what we stood for but was a Reagan Democrat in '84. 'Politics is down steam from culture' Andrew Breitbart. We are in another culture war, and the blue hair girls will wash out their dyed hair soon, just hope they don't bring back Disco, please.
The birds might be smarter than our lib friends and start reading and talking what they read. All day. They are birds, however, and political nuance may be beyond them. Your plan is a good one.
We've returned to 19th Century dailies' tribalism. The difference is they announced their devotion (eg, many of the Missouri papers appended "Democrat" or "Republican" to their names), now it's just: all news that's fit to print.
You are right that the readership is old, but the problem is that the talking points disseminate across all media including TikTok. There are plenty of young people who are so far removed fro the actual news, and who have so little knowledge of history, even recent history, that they too fall in with groupthink. In fact, younger people are more susceptible to peer pressure than older people are. So it's a universal problem.
Bari Weiss and The Free Press hasn’t even reported the story. Bari is compromised because she hates Tulsi (recall the Toadie smear because she dared spoke to Assad) and Nellie worships at the feet of queen Hillary. TFP is becoming a joke.
I unsubscribed from TFP after a one year subscription. It quickly became clear to me Bari was angling TFP to be an establishment-friendly publication with ever so slightly more candor and lack of self-seriousness than the existing MSM cesspool.
I have to disagree. TFP has been pretty good on this story and I’m sure will have more, just not taking the lead as Taibbi has done. There are some weak spots but I don’t read the really lame “cultural”
humor stuff—but they have had some really good writers/thinkers and even have some ideologically diverse stuff. Most of what they’ve written would get them drummed out of the NYT newsroom for thoughtcrime.
The Free Press is in active discussions to be purchased by Skydance, the parent company of CBS. They are going the way of MSM, and have been headed that way for a while.
If you post a link in this thread to their coverage of the Durham annex I will read it and happily consider changing my mind. Will monitor my notifications for your response as it may be a couple days until it comes out, as you observe, which is fair.
Don't think I've seen anything on the latest disclosures, but the commentary on the first part of the Gabbard disclosures was solid--Eli Lake, Josh Hammer, and Jed Rubenfield. They didn't all agree on everything but it was some of the better arguments on the subject. They have weak writers of no interest to me, but have had many good ones. Matti Friedman's discussion of Israel's dilemma was some of the best writing I've seen.
Definitely the case regarding her reporting on the Israel - Hamas war in Gaza. No way the NYT allows her or Matti Friedman to write on that topic in their pages.
Eh. I laughed uproariously at many a Nellie Bowles TGIF column and appreciated the various heterodox writers they had come on. But it started to drift in the direction I described after 8-9 months of my reading it. Disagreement with the valence of a source and being unwilling to pay to consume it does not mean I crave an echo chamber.
We don't expect "an echo chamber." We expect a paper to cover all stories--no matter how they may cut politically-- without fear or favor. TFP fails massively in this regard.
Nope, TFP started out as ‘Common Sense’. I’m pointing out that they are largely ignoring the Tulsi drops that are coming out weekly now, and show Hilary and Obama to be absolutely rotten to the core. I only now subscribe to substacks that I perceive as seeking truths. TFP sometimes does this and other times fails miserably.
They actually ran a column by Eli Lake - no liberal - that was basically dismissive of the new claims as nothing new.
I’m in the middle. I think the new disclosures quantify most of what Durham found, but don’t open any new territory.. There certainly is a case to be made against some Obama appointees, most notably John Brennan. I doubt very much there’s a good case against Obama.
The misconduct, while serious criminal, does not remotely meet the definition of treason. And Trump does the case no favors by his continual exaggerations and braggadocio.
TFP was closely allied with Matt Taibbi in the past and will be in the future.
If you want to set up litmus tests for various blogs, go ahead. It’s not my style.
I hate to break the bad news, but with that translates to is you only support substacks that adhere to your worldview. Most of the complaints above are that they are not adopting the Trump agenda. True enough, but I consider that a mark of Independence. The site remains the same slightly right of center place that earned it its reputation.
He said "seeking truths" not his world view; no one above said "Trump agenda" - the true "bad news" is that you need to learn to read, as opposed to infer things that are neither said, nor implied.
They abruptly began censoring their comments section with a very heavy hand in May 2024. No warning. No clear set of guidelines (indeed, anything with a pretense of being guidelines didn't appear until about a month later). One of the most notable features was that the primary Left-wing troll didn't get censored for months and months afterward.
Complaints to the staff finally got the response that TFP now considered their comments sections part of their 'product,' and they were going to make it look exactly the way they wanted it to look.
Aside from the aforementioned troll, the comments section had always been one of the better ones on the Internet, with lively discussions and mostly respectful disagreements. But evidently too many of the commenters (mostly very early subscribers to Common Sense) were too conservative for TFP's tastes. So they were censored. This happened in coordination with a rather abrupt left turn in the trend of the articles.
I finally gave up at the end of August 2024. I came to Common Sense for the classical liberal take it originally presented. It had ceased to have that at all.
Wow! That's some omission. I hear Bari's in line for a top executive job when the MSM cull is over and the establishment media rebrand begins - Bari's NYT to her core: biased, bigoted, lazy, smug, entitled, incurious, and "a little bit nuts."
Yeah, esp entitled. Bari will worm (and that's the right adjective) her way back into the good graces of The System in due course, if it hasn't happened already.
Thanks for this! Utterly horrifying, if we wondered what "post-Russia-gate" "Auto-pen MSM was going to look like - now we know.
CBS 2.0 - f-me, Weiss is worse than Leslie Stahl et al, who at least knew they were lying.
Weiss is malleable dunce - she fit right in with the Russia-gate TDS crowd until the wokesters turned on Israel. She's as bad, or worse, than Ezra and Charles Blow combined - half a thimbleful of curiousity, dear God.
I terminated my subscription with Weiss a couple of years ago because she's part of the neocon-hegemon crowd who likes using tax dollars to kill people.
10/7 made it lose whatever objectivity it had prior to that time. Over time Bari has hired on dinosaurs from the MSM and intel adjacent community. So yeah, dodgy indeed.
The Free Press is nothing but warmed over turds. Pretending to be honest journalism but she is owned and controlled by Big Tech and they see the writing on the wall regarding outlets like NYT and WSJ etc. the free press only hires ex MSM journalists who have the proper liberal indoctrination in their training. Not a single true conservative voice And do not criticize Hilary too much or you will get put into time out.
They used to have Douglas Murray and occasionally Batya Ungar- Sargon, plus a few others I enjoyed but then they didn’t have my favorites any longer and I became bored and disillusioned so I cancelled my subscription. Don’t miss it at all.
I read Bari’s picks today and not one mention of this story. During the Biden years there was not one single mention of corruption until Joe was out of the race. The Free Press has great writers but I would never look to them for anything truthful
lol I’m surprised they haven’t gone with “Ba’athist” yet. Since, ya know, that’s a socialist Arab party. And it sounds scary since it’s an Arabic word.
Matt seems to say that the Times is mistaken, when they’re deliberately, maliciously lying. And if they were to report on the story accurately now, they’d have to admit their previous lies.
Scott Adams says that the problem with the Russiagate story is its complexity. It’s easy to understand “Trump is a Russian asset” even though it’s a bald faced lie. Explaining how/why it’s a lie is complicated, and normal people (i.e. those who don’t subscribe to Racket, lol) don’t have the patience or the will to understand it, especially when the venerable, gag, Times repeats the lie with vigor, even now.
Tak, calling the valid Trump / Russia investigations (which were unfortunately somewhat influenced by probable KGB agent Igor Danchenko) "Russiagate" is a KGB*-encouraged disinfo op in-and-of-itself, especially since the only reason it's resurfacing now is to try to divert attention from Trump's relationship with convicted child sex-trafficker and pedophile Jefferey Epstein.
Tom, Grow up and learn how to think logically. If the original Epstein files could have been used to implicate Trump in any unseemly behavior Biden would have jumped at the chance and ordered Garland( thanks to Mitch for keeping him from becoming a Supreme) to release the information with great fanfare. Dems are the ones using it to distract from their Dumpster Fire.
The notion that Epstein related dirt on Trump would have been held in reserve through TWO election cycles (2020 and 2024) only to be deployed on 2025 is just laughable. To me it looks like a desperate smokescreen covering the Clinton-Obama-Brennan retreat.
Sorry to disappoint you, Matty, but I'm a real person. Truth-be-told, the only reason I'm here is because my handlers told me to spread as much evil, evil, evil "Deep State" disinfo as possible.
Was Biden President when “Republican” South Florida U.S. Attorney, Alex Acosta — before he became Trump’s Secretary of Labor — gave Epstein “the deal of a lifetime” which also protected any possible coconspirators of Epstein?
No, the POTUS in 2008 (at time of Acosta led proceedings) was George W. Bush, who we MAGA disown, most especially for his WMD lies and tremendous amounts of blood and treasure wasted in the deserts of Iraq and Syria.
See how easy it is for an actual human to reply to a question? You should try it!
Anyway, check your programming. You will learn that Acosta was instructed by government handlers to go soft on Epstein plea deal at time because Jeffrey was said to be ‘intel asset adjacent’.
In my current conspiratorial thinking, Epstein minor child sex ring was (in part) to seal Financial Fixer deals between international intel and government agencies (think Iran-Contra) type deals. And likely Israel/Mossad was involved, and there is no way on God’s green earth that either major USA party is going to soil the only ‘democracy’ in the Near East by publicly exposing Epstein info that makes Israel look bad.
It’s amazing how fast and accurate we “bots” are becoming, huh? How's my syntax, grammar, vocabulary, and punctuation doing tonight? (I hope you don't mind the Oxford comma.)
The correct spelling of his first name is ‘Jeffrey’. Get that part down Mr. Graves. In my current thinking the deep state spiked the Epstein punch against Trump just like they engineered Russia gate. And that’s why the docs are not released.
However, there are 2019 Epstein Grand Jury transcripts that Trump asked the DOJ to release. But so far a judge has blocked. Maybe those will come out after a lot of redactions. The public would then see what the government had on Epstein to put him away.
Are you in favor of those redacted Grand Jury transcript release?
Will all of Epstein's pedophile clients, be they "Communist / Socialist / Globalist / 'Deep State' Dems," or "Patriotic 'Republicans'" be listed, or will the names of the "Patriotic 'Republicans'" be redacted? Tangentially, will the actual testimony of the victims be released, or just synopses?
Repeating the stories from the same people who have lied about Trump and Russia for most of a decade seems pretty close to the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
The oft-repeated phrase, “however much contempt you feel for the mainstream media, it’s not enough” is true as ever here. And this from someone who came up out of college in the early teens revering the Times as a serious paper. It took about two years of critical thinking from 2015-2017 for me to realize it was abject propaganda. It only gets worse by the year.
It’s gotten overt. The timeless way to lie in the media is by selection and emphasis. You leave out some things and make other things seem most important. Now even the NYT editorializes in its headlines. That’s new. My hypothesis is that reporters over rely on human sources because documents that could confirm or provide nuance aren’t available. Over classification began to make government secrecy seem normal, and the national security state made secrecy permanent. At the same time, dissent within the bureaucracy was shut down. We saw the party line enforced on the public at large, once the bureaucracy could be made to follow in lockstep. What does that do to reporters who rely on insider sources? They become totally dependent on what they are told, because there really isn’t a way to independently confirm or learn the context of what they hear. This much is baked into the cake, but the icing is the willingness of reporters to regurgitate what they are told as if it’s gospel. My hypothesis on that is that today’s reporters think of themselves as part of the ruling class they report on.
Wonderfully put. To summarize and elaborate on your points with an extended metaphor: populists began to besiege the Establishment’s decaying castle in 2010-2011 (Occupy/Tea Party) which loosely translates into Bernie/Trump 2016 campaign surges. The bureaucracy, emboldened by the Obama years, closes ranks against the populists. The MSM follows suit with their bureaucratic sources, raising the drawbridge behind them. Despite a furious battle that succeeds in slaying Bernie, Trump breaks through in November 2016. The Establishment then fights hand to hand throughout the heart of the castle to rid it of Trump via Russiagate and other ploys.
But now, after the 2024 election brought Trump back in through the gates even more forcefully than before, think that battle is finally turning against the Establishment. But it’s still messy hand to hand fighting inside the castle.
NYT: This is the same entity that this week splashed a full-color photo of “a starving Gaza child” on its front page—omitting that this child is a victim of a terrible neurological disease, not “starvation”, and also cutting from the photographic image the child’s perfectly healthy brother.
Matt - if you want to understand why the media is what it is today, you need to deconstruct the collegiate journalism these people were taught for at least the last 30-40 years (maybe skipping the last 10 or so, because god only knows there). The path that became the mainstream versus those like yourself that didn't get a journalism degree. What qualifications does a college professor in journalism actually possess in order to teach journalism? What kind of "research" qualifies for a PhD dissertation? That's where the bullshit factory is built.
American education is a self sustaining feedback loop that never intersects with reality. in general, Teachers dont know shit except how to create more teachers whose only knowlege is how to work for the education system.
I cannot begin to tell you how many times I have attempted to convince people the NYT is a propaganda organ. I have probably tried to convince 25 or 30 people. I believe I have succeeded with two of those people, but maybe only because they were primed to start doubting the NYT a couple years ago when their 35-year-old son began insisting the NYT was propaganda.
To most of these people I have recommended Ashley Rindsberg's excellent book _The Gray Lady Winked: How the New York Times's Misreporting, Distortions and Fabrications Radically Alter History_. I doubt any of them have read it, though. They are so thoroughly indoctrinated that reading such a book is anathema to them. They simply cannot allow themselves to do it.
There is a glory hole in Manhattan where all the DNC, CIA, FBI slime and HRC go to unload. On the other side of the wall is Charlie Savage with mouth wide open…
I think: 1. We are becoming more aware of crap that was always there, and also 2. Since Covid began, the elite psychopaths have been piling on much more crap than they had been piling on prior to Covid.
By almost every metric life for people has improved by miles in the last century, especially. Infant mortality figures, health, literacy, literacy among women (remains a challenge). Death from wars is much lower than during the 20th century. Cancer diagnosis and treatment. Morbidity is the greatest challenge we face in the west - when we choose illness, ill-health, and early death from questionable lifestyle choices.
There are lots of Boomers here - remember what going to the dentist - used to be like. Better today, no? Much, much better!
If there is any justice in this world, job seekers citing their past tenure at the NYT will soon join those claiming a Harvard pedigree.
BTW, one disgusting thing that still goes unmentioned is the way the Clinton campaign distracted everyone from the actual content of the Wikileaks email exposure by making it a question of the leak source. It was briefly noted at the time that no one whose emails were exposed actually denied that they were authentic. And even today, slimeballs like John Podesta still hold down responsible (and no doubt highly-compensated) positions in this sleazy bureaucracy.
My head is spinning. There have been so many revelations and blatant CYA's this past week, it is refreshing to read such clear and detailed analyses by Matt. Thanks Matt for helping unravel this riddle, wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. But what are we supposed to expect when out Intelligence Services are involved and spinning to a willing Press.
Holodomor, Iraq WMD, Russiagate, Covid, Gaza, etc. NYT’s wall of shame grows. The real question is how anyone still believes them.
Seriously who even reads any mainstream anything at this point? NYT or WSJ exist to line bird cages. The readership has to have an average age of 70+. It's over, the next gen doesn't care AT ALL .
There are quite a few of us with 70+ years under our belt who have known for awhile that the mainstream media are propaganda organs. I'm 74, and I figured it out several years ago. Now if only I could convince my 59-year-old sister to stop paying attention to NYT, WaPo, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, BBC etc.
Your sister isn't looking for the truth or an accurate accounting , she just wants to hear her favorite band "play the hits" even if it's total bullshit.
Michael, you are 100% correct.
The most important thing I learned during Covid is that most people believe what they believe simply because they want to believe it.
Arguably it’s just common sense, to believe the same nonsense your friends believe. It’s not like your knowing the truth will change the world one iota, after all.
It will just leave you with fewer friends!
Moral: If you want a happy life, stay away from red pills.
Well, I'll argue. Common sense would dictate a belief in facts as opposed to believing your "friends" nonsense. Moral: Following idiot "friends" for acceptance, while possibly great fun short term, is a sure road to ruin.
I think many people NEED to believe it.
First, human psychology craves belief, i.e. the full emotional commitment to some ideas without (and maybe despite) data and logic. It is certainly easier, and more comforting, to attach yourself to some beliefs, instead of constantly seeking new information, and then re-evaluating your conclusions and opinions.
Second, we have large (and apparently growing) contingents of people who are emotionally fragile, especially on the left, where it is a new virtue. I was very disappointed during COVID to see how many friends became basket cases. And how many of them needed a reassuring authority (emphasis on authority) to tell them what to do. Their dedicated belief to the official narratives were the only way they could cope.
Like religion
Hardly. Read and study the five proofs for the existence of God by Thomas Aquinas.
Wow. That’s brilliant!
Had a very bright academic Dem explicitly admit as much - when pinned.
I'm 66 & I never read that crap.
"WE FUCKED UP" in 96 point font above the fold is the only way the NYT will ever get me to turn to that rag for reliable information. The NYT has no journalistic standards (hasn't had for some time) and isn't today and in the future remotely concerned with informing anyone about anything.
A subscription to access the NYT archive for research purposes is a sound investment, however. The track record of their public lies from 2000 onwards is invaluable and essential reading. How long till NYT shit-cans or stealth edits the archive? Who knows?
All kudos to Matt for the moment. Matt (and Walter) still really need to re-calibrate their read of Obama and the Dems writ large from the WOT onwards. Obama was not, and never has been, one of the "good guys."
Obama embraced his role as the enthusiastic and amoral front for an era of truly epochal gang-fuckery of the American public from 2008 on - from the ACA, to Too Big To Fail, to the Security State Spying on the press, Congress, and the American public, Russiagate right up to the present. Matt's still way, way, way behind the curve on this stuff.
That said, Matt's work today is almost beyond reproach. Ditto Walter's. I'll be happily renewing my subscription to Racket. Commenters are great, too!
As the Durham report is now being criticized, and parsed, please read my 2022 assessment of the Durham "failure" to convict Michael Sussman of lying to the FBI, which seems to me now in August of 2025 to be both apt and germane. Critical feedback welcome!
"....Had Durham "won" the case against Michael Sussman he (Durham) would have provided the FBI with a plausible, jury-determined defense against future charges that senior FBI officials “knowingly” deployed Clinton crap as the predicate for the Alpha bank scam. A Durham victory would have allowed the FBI to claim that: “Sussman lied to us. He told us he was acting as a concerned citizen. The FBI was duped!” The jury just torched any such fiction."
"The jury in fact judged that Michael Sussman indeed had “Clinton campaign” tattooed on his forehead when he approached the FBI in 2016 as a self-described ‘concerned citizen.’ The jury judgment rendered all FBI claims that “Sussman deceived us” to be utterly implausible, and did so quickly and emphatically."
"The FBI and their allies now have to explain how a DC jury just determined that officials at the highest level in Obama's FBI in fact knew in 2016 they were using evidence supplied by a Clinton campaign lawyer as the predicate for an investigation into Clinton’s political opponent, and that these senior officials concealed this fact from the Chicago FBI agents charged with investigating the Clinton campaign's Alpha bank ‘evidence'. The jury also learned that the campaign paid their lawyer to hand deliver said evidence to a senior FBI official who happened to be his close friend James Baker. The Clinton campaign’s claims of "we didn’t know Sussman would go to the FBI" are immaterial at this point in the process. Given the campaign’s efforts to have the FBI and others credit campaign research as viable evidence of collusion raises real questions about the campaign’s claim that Sussman “went rogue” when he took the Clinton paid-for evidence to the FBI. Are we supposed to believe the HRC campaign didn’t want the FBI to investigate her opponent?"
"The most significant fact the jury learned is that HRC personally approved of the Alpha bank scam."
"The verdict just rendered will likely play a material role in any future prosecutions of individuals inside the FBI and the Justice department, and others, working to actively interfere in the 2016 election and undermine the administration of the 45th president of the United States."
"Durham has a reputation as one of the finest and most methodical prosecutors in America We’re seeing that now."
"For a better than average short treatment of the verdict, read this: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/white-collar-and-criminal-law/ex-clinton-campaign-lawyer-found-not-guilty-of-lying-to-fbi" (now behind a pay wall, it seems. Sorry.)
Durham's no dummy, he understood the limits of what he could accomplish. Durham's "loss" and the jury's verdict that the FBI understood completely that Sussman was acting as part of the HRC campaign renders all current denials in 2025 meaningless. A jury has already determined the FBI knew full well in September of 2016 that Sussman, a paid HRC lawyer, was funneling HRC oppo research to the FBI - and demanding the FBI's co-operation - which the FBI duly provided.
Fact.
The above comment refers only to the Sussman trial.
To fully appreciate Durham's focus, we need to recall that Durham only prosecuted two individuals Michael Sussman and FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith. Just two, but consider the impact today.
Clinesmith, working for Comey, pleaded guilty in the US District Court for the District of Columbia to a false statement offense in 2020. Wapo in January of 2021 gloated that "The case against Clinesmith is the first and only criminal allegation to arise from U.S. Attorney John Durham's review of the FBI's Russia case."
Durham's two prosecutions actually succeeded in establishing beyond all doubt two critical facts about the FBI in 2016.
Durham first secured an admission from FBI attorney Clinesmith that he altered a document used to fraudulently obtain FISA warrants against Trump campaign staff.
Durham then secured a jury verdict in the Sussman trial that demolished all claims of FBI did not know that the FBI was in fact acting as arm of the HRC campaign in 2016.
FBI lawyers illegally altering documents to illegally obtain FISA warrants against HRC's opponant. FBI lawyers knowingly working with the Clinton campaign to falsely accuse HRC's opponent of working with Russia in 2016.
We owe Durham a ton of respect for the power and economy of his focus. Hope he gets the credit - coz he put the FBI's testicles squarely in the vice. Time to squeeze.
Sussman cannot be guilty of lying to the FBI, when the FBI knew the source and content of the information. Durham got what was needed. NYT sucks.
Right, but of course it wasn't a fuck up, it was intentional and malicious, just as supporting every war since 1935 is intentional and malicious. Revisionist history has buried how opposed the American People were to WWII and still are to every war.
Transferred the paper to my grandson’s cockatiel cage during Bush 2 for a bit then stopped all consumption
Yes, totally agree.
I love coming to Substack every day for my own curated news from Taibbi, Fang, Shellenberger, & Tracey. Who needs legacy media?
I'd required them to add the words "ON PURPOSE" to your proposed headline, and then a long mea culpa about their decisions to lie on purpose and the faulty reasons why. That would help me, but probably not get me to read the rag again.
Paul Harper is right that Matt is behind on Obama.
I guess I was an early bloomer, I grew up reading 2 papers in my household, I developed a discerning eye for BS at an early age.
Can't help myself replying. I'm 84 and didn't either. :). But even stopped reading WSJ.
Yes, WSJ got permeated by activist journalists, too. I still read their book reviews, though.
I must admit to the occasional curiosity. They do suck.
I quit right before Covid shutdown. All msm. Most peaceful summer in my older life. I didn’t even know about george Floyd until later—that’s how complete my blackout was. It’s still off. Removed myself from the Demwit cult not long after Biden was rolled in on a gurney.
My older siblings ( and some friends), who are of similar age continue to believe if it’s written in the NYTIMES or WAPO or heard on NPR it’s gospel. There is no hope for them ever seeing the light. I point them to Matt and others like Michael Shellenberger but they refuse to widen their horizons. Willful ignorance is a real thing.
I have the same issue with some in my circle.
I'm a boomer at 75 yo. I've never subscribed to a newspaper. I have not seen an alphabet newscast or local newscast since my 1984 divorce. Clinton was president for months before I even new what he looked like. Saw a pic of him and pants suit on the front of a mag at the grocery checkout line.
I'm a rural dweller that has never voted for a Dem, but found globalist like the Bush family a far cry from conservative. Obama's eight years brought the country to its knees.
I think that bad wrap the Boomers get certainly does not apply to me and other people I know - hard working, raising families of more hard working people who respect laws, pays bills and stay out of debt.
I’m in that camp too.
hear, hear
One can only hope the MSM dies off with the boomers, of which I am one. Nearly all the people, and family I know in my age group have swallowed the MSM bullshit and refuse to even consider any of the truth.
That sounds like many of my family and friends, just knee-deep in BS and ready to suck up more.
I am also 74 and I can tell you that the nearest MSM large metropolitan newspaper is a relentless leftist rag whose derangement syndrome equals the WSJ.
Isn’t it really just Dem and Dem-adjacent vs GOP and GOP- adjacent rather than age? My 38 and 41 year old kids probably have lifetime subscriptions to NYT etc. They think Matt along w every other “substacker” can’t get a job elsewhere. Feels hopeless.
I'm 87, all my 60+ year old Nieces and 30+ year old grand Nieces are professionals working in education or health care. They all "go" with the MSM and especially former Biden government, because the government is the actual source of their income. They are all married with children and homes and practicing reasonable Christians. My daughter, 46, is one of J. D. Vance's "cat ladies," never married, lives alone, a former serious Buddhist, now a "professional" yoga instructor -actually makes a decent living (in SoCal). Some weeks a year she travels the world attending trans dance festivals as a "musician" and dancer. She's a little further Left than the Nieces. My dearly departed, at 86, wonderful sister-in-law, was an avid fan of "The View." Who can figure women today? I voted Republican in 1960, and still do.
At least Maher & Co. are closing up shop. Not sure where the effete listeners will go. Shortwave radio, maybe? Voice of California?
It's pointless to try, as it likely serves her need for confirmation bias.
I think Walter Kirn said it best (from a very good 2023 interview) linked below:
“I have tried the case (of the MSM) and come to this conclusion for myself—that between the deceptiveness, the agenda-driven nature, and the social-media-oriented vapidity of the press, it is no longer a reliable source of information about the world. It’s a very good source of information about itself. If you wish to know who’s up and who’s down, who’s in and who’s out, who scored points and lost points, it’s a great scorecard. But if you’re looking to find out what’s going on, it’s a terrible one. In fact, it will actually conceal what’s going on in almost every respect.”
https://www.palladiummag.com/2023/07/25/walter-kirn-on-how-america-lost-the-plot/
Excellent point….MSM is essentially no better than TMZ
Very late Soviet. Official lies in the state paper that no one with a brain or not complicit still believes. Living in the USSA, you don’t know how lucky you are boy…
I worked with a Polish immigrant for years. He came here before the fall of the soviet union, and became a proud hardworking citizen. He told me that back in Poland everyone on his street would come out and sit on their front steps when the news came on, they all knew it was BS.
I'm 71 and I'm here too. Getting tired of boomer-bashing.
My friend I'm pretty damn close to retirement age myself. It's not a bash , it's the point that young people don't read the "papers" and believe it or not every year more of us at this part of the age spectrum will stop existing (which makes us poor readers)
Only boomers get the area newspaper around me and listen to all the msm. I’m 77. Haven’t touched any of it for years.
We can't be blamed too much. We fucked up everything for generations to come, while turning ourselves into morbidly obese, human beach-balls.
COVID lockdowns were imposed to protect Boomer beach-balls who refused to make the effort get their BMIs below 30 and near 22. The Boomer response to the data was - "fuck the data, fuck the kids, fuck everyone, I NEED MY DING-DONGS, especially NOW when my self-loathing is peaking!!!"
BLAME the BOOMERS? Absolutely! How can we not? History certainly will. - nutless, amoral, "I've got mine" egotistical cowards who surrendered, for the most part, to the tyranny of lies and exploitation we're all enduring now.
I used to work with lots of Boomer teachers - the most loathsome were the ones who blamed the kids - I pointed out - the only ones getting paid to provide classrooms solutions - can't, or won't.
Didn't win me many friends among the Boomer bums, but my students were generally happy.
Born in '59 to squeak into the Boomer category. No one I knew ever imagined a national debt of 37 or so trillion dollars. It wasn't created nor wanted by your average hard working, middle class guy but a Cadre of Boomer shit heads got us here while gutting our manufacturing base. On our watch though, we should have been more aware and better informed and stopped it years ago. Perhaps we can make a multigenerational pact to do that now.
It's the overgeneralization I object to. Plenty of younger people are guilty of the same offenses.
My primary topic of interest is nutrition, so to your beachball point: something about the modern lifestyle is driving the obesity epidemic. Lifestyle factors tend to take years if not decades to manifest. So of course more older people look fat to you. Give the younger generations time, their inflationary days are approaching.
Fair points and you're right about trend lines. Changing behaviors quickly is easy with the right incentives (carrots and sticks) - happens easily in any structured setting.
RFK Jr. might be a loon (I don't think he is) but he's 100 percent right when observes there's no long-term revenue source like a sick child. I spent lots of time in social groups where being a fat-ass carried real penalties. My wife is more strident on these issues - nutrition, diet, exercise. I ran with our son to get his distances up and ensured he could swim like a fish.
We're far from perfect. Obesity is a real issue for a minority and can be managed successfully in many cases. Smoking, drinking "responsible" drug-taking - these are all choices. We didn't need lock downs, we needed people to look in the mirror and say - my lifestyle could put me in a box quick - I need to change. I can actually think of one tubbie who did. The rest just hid indoors and stuffed their faces. Sad.
But you're right 100 percent - the technology makes passivity a fatal choice - we need to be actively judicious about what we allow into our bodies and between our ears.
I don't see RFK as a loon. I was originally attracted to him as a candidate because his ideas on nutrition align with mine. It's a common anecdote in the low-carb community that you almost never get sick. I haven't had a cold since 2010. So I didn't think I needed the Covid jab, even assuming that it had any preventive effect at all.
Over many years, it's been shown that what you eat has a greater effect on your weight and overall health than exercise. Yet the conventional wisdom refuses to budge, thanks largely to regulatory capture.
'Changing behaviors quickly is easy with the right incentives (carrots and sticks)'
It's not easy to change dietary habits, especially not when all the economic incentives are for industry to create crap products, and for people to think they only need to take a pill to reverse the crap effects.
The self importance is stunning. Hey…ever heard of history? Maybe read some before arriving at this shallow conclusion about what one generation did or didn’t “fuck up…”
The Boomer Bums didn't have video games while growing up so of course they're loathsome Ding Dong eaters. Blaming the kids for not learning when presented with classroom solutions is the worst.
https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/overweight-obesity
When the fish stinks - it starts at the head - as Boomers, we’ve generally set a horrible example - lazy, incurious teachers - incapable of connecting, and communicating with their unlucky charges. It’s the teacher’s main job to connect with each student as a person and invite them to “think.” For too many, the job is: “why can’t my students understand how lucky they are to have me? I was really made for greatness, instead I’m stuck with these dunces.” It’s like that.
Let's do the math, currently out of favor in education. With 30 students, a teacher could connect individually with each one for two minutes per hour and do nothing else. Not practical. So instead they speak extemp like first-time open microphone comics. This in a time when interesting, polished, and tested videos are available. Imagine if the "blab school" marms had been unionized?
Counterintuitive, isn't it, that the hippies became the barons of capitalism, eh?
Some cut our hair and became 'yuppies' and left the commune after the lazy ones wanted a 'fair share' of the cake. David Crosby was the only one not to visit a barber but times changed and he couldn't adapt. Being the last boomer, 1964, I liked some of what we stood for but was a Reagan Democrat in '84. 'Politics is down steam from culture' Andrew Breitbart. We are in another culture war, and the blue hair girls will wash out their dyed hair soon, just hope they don't bring back Disco, please.
Abbie Hoffman went from Yuppie to entrepreneur, in other words, to being a entrepreneur in a different racket.
Ditto
😂
I have colleagues in their 30’s and 40’s who look to the NYTimes as their bible
Remove them as colleagues.
Not that easy….
A sickness of the body politic but one that will be eventually cured .. one way or another.
Funny you should say that…when I cancelled my subscription they asked why I was doing that. I said: “My canary died.”
Ha ha ha ha ha!!!
I'm 71, and have read neither paper/birdcage liner for 20 years.
I'm over 70 and dropped these empty shells decades ago. A rebel against the rebellion.
When I cancelled I told them that purpose of news is to inform and not to tell me how I'm supposed to feel about it.
My mother in law , she’s for the most part a lovely woman but it’s like talking with a retard.
For the record, I have birds and would never mistreat them like that!
The birds might be smarter than our lib friends and start reading and talking what they read. All day. They are birds, however, and political nuance may be beyond them. Your plan is a good one.
Do they still print this drivel?
We've returned to 19th Century dailies' tribalism. The difference is they announced their devotion (eg, many of the Missouri papers appended "Democrat" or "Republican" to their names), now it's just: all news that's fit to print.
You are right that the readership is old, but the problem is that the talking points disseminate across all media including TikTok. There are plenty of young people who are so far removed fro the actual news, and who have so little knowledge of history, even recent history, that they too fall in with groupthink. In fact, younger people are more susceptible to peer pressure than older people are. So it's a universal problem.
😆
Bari Weiss and The Free Press hasn’t even reported the story. Bari is compromised because she hates Tulsi (recall the Toadie smear because she dared spoke to Assad) and Nellie worships at the feet of queen Hillary. TFP is becoming a joke.
I unsubscribed from TFP after a one year subscription. It quickly became clear to me Bari was angling TFP to be an establishment-friendly publication with ever so slightly more candor and lack of self-seriousness than the existing MSM cesspool.
Yes, it’s MSM 2.0. And how disappointing that is after Bari’s departure from The NYT and invite to investigate the Twitter Files.
I also dropped my subscription. It started out great, but the New York rot is like a metastatic cancer in their bones.
I have to disagree. TFP has been pretty good on this story and I’m sure will have more, just not taking the lead as Taibbi has done. There are some weak spots but I don’t read the really lame “cultural”
humor stuff—but they have had some really good writers/thinkers and even have some ideologically diverse stuff. Most of what they’ve written would get them drummed out of the NYT newsroom for thoughtcrime.
The Free Press is in active discussions to be purchased by Skydance, the parent company of CBS. They are going the way of MSM, and have been headed that way for a while.
If true, that's too bad.
Here’s the story I saw. The fact that Bari is even considering selling to CBS parent company makes me sad for all those duped by her vaneer:
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/skydance-early-talks-acquire-free-press-nyt-reports-2025-07-11/
If you post a link in this thread to their coverage of the Durham annex I will read it and happily consider changing my mind. Will monitor my notifications for your response as it may be a couple days until it comes out, as you observe, which is fair.
Don't think I've seen anything on the latest disclosures, but the commentary on the first part of the Gabbard disclosures was solid--Eli Lake, Josh Hammer, and Jed Rubenfield. They didn't all agree on everything but it was some of the better arguments on the subject. They have weak writers of no interest to me, but have had many good ones. Matti Friedman's discussion of Israel's dilemma was some of the best writing I've seen.
Sounds good. I will still wait for their discussion of the Durham annex since that was the original poster’s critique and challenge to TFP.
Definitely the case regarding her reporting on the Israel - Hamas war in Gaza. No way the NYT allows her or Matti Friedman to write on that topic in their pages.
You've explained it perfectly, flyoverdriver.
No it hasn't. Not even close.
Bingo! as the Big Guy might say..
TFP ain't an echochamber. Evidently, that's what you expected when you subscribed.
Eh. I laughed uproariously at many a Nellie Bowles TGIF column and appreciated the various heterodox writers they had come on. But it started to drift in the direction I described after 8-9 months of my reading it. Disagreement with the valence of a source and being unwilling to pay to consume it does not mean I crave an echo chamber.
We don't expect "an echo chamber." We expect a paper to cover all stories--no matter how they may cut politically-- without fear or favor. TFP fails massively in this regard.
Nope, TFP started out as ‘Common Sense’. I’m pointing out that they are largely ignoring the Tulsi drops that are coming out weekly now, and show Hilary and Obama to be absolutely rotten to the core. I only now subscribe to substacks that I perceive as seeking truths. TFP sometimes does this and other times fails miserably.
They actually ran a column by Eli Lake - no liberal - that was basically dismissive of the new claims as nothing new.
I’m in the middle. I think the new disclosures quantify most of what Durham found, but don’t open any new territory.. There certainly is a case to be made against some Obama appointees, most notably John Brennan. I doubt very much there’s a good case against Obama.
The misconduct, while serious criminal, does not remotely meet the definition of treason. And Trump does the case no favors by his continual exaggerations and braggadocio.
TFP was closely allied with Matt Taibbi in the past and will be in the future.
If you want to set up litmus tests for various blogs, go ahead. It’s not my style.
I hate to break the bad news, but with that translates to is you only support substacks that adhere to your worldview. Most of the complaints above are that they are not adopting the Trump agenda. True enough, but I consider that a mark of Independence. The site remains the same slightly right of center place that earned it its reputation.
He said "seeking truths" not his world view; no one above said "Trump agenda" - the true "bad news" is that you need to learn to read, as opposed to infer things that are neither said, nor implied.
What I *expected* was that a forum that calls themselves The FREE Press, wouldn't censor views they disagreed with.
THAT is what made me cancel.
Except that they don’t do that. The view they did publish on the Russian thing (by Eli Lake) was in disagreement with Taibbi. You evidently disagree.
They abruptly began censoring their comments section with a very heavy hand in May 2024. No warning. No clear set of guidelines (indeed, anything with a pretense of being guidelines didn't appear until about a month later). One of the most notable features was that the primary Left-wing troll didn't get censored for months and months afterward.
Complaints to the staff finally got the response that TFP now considered their comments sections part of their 'product,' and they were going to make it look exactly the way they wanted it to look.
Aside from the aforementioned troll, the comments section had always been one of the better ones on the Internet, with lively discussions and mostly respectful disagreements. But evidently too many of the commenters (mostly very early subscribers to Common Sense) were too conservative for TFP's tastes. So they were censored. This happened in coordination with a rather abrupt left turn in the trend of the articles.
I finally gave up at the end of August 2024. I came to Common Sense for the classical liberal take it originally presented. It had ceased to have that at all.
As you wish. It actually has the same staff it began with, and is pretty much in the same place.
Same. Almost exactly.
Wow! That's some omission. I hear Bari's in line for a top executive job when the MSM cull is over and the establishment media rebrand begins - Bari's NYT to her core: biased, bigoted, lazy, smug, entitled, incurious, and "a little bit nuts."
Yeah, esp entitled. Bari will worm (and that's the right adjective) her way back into the good graces of The System in due course, if it hasn't happened already.
Bari is about to sell The Free Press to Skydance Media, which is the parent company of CBS. She’s a sell out extraordinaire.
Thanks for this! Utterly horrifying, if we wondered what "post-Russia-gate" "Auto-pen MSM was going to look like - now we know.
CBS 2.0 - f-me, Weiss is worse than Leslie Stahl et al, who at least knew they were lying.
Weiss is malleable dunce - she fit right in with the Russia-gate TDS crowd until the wokesters turned on Israel. She's as bad, or worse, than Ezra and Charles Blow combined - half a thimbleful of curiousity, dear God.
Thanks for that disgusting-but-not-surprising info, Matt!
I terminated my subscription with Weiss a couple of years ago because she's part of the neocon-hegemon crowd who likes using tax dollars to kill people.
Same here, I smelled a stinking fish and jumped ship.
That endeavor (TFP) has been dodgy from the getgo
10/7 made it lose whatever objectivity it had prior to that time. Over time Bari has hired on dinosaurs from the MSM and intel adjacent community. So yeah, dodgy indeed.
Hired legacy media people? Are you serious?
Keep up Frank. Here ya go.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/business/free-press-skydance-acquisition-talks.html
And for that matter, what legacy people do you have in mind?
TFP has a very small staff. Most of the articles are purchased from freelancers elsewhere
I liked TFP at first, but I stopped liking it after I got to know more about Bari and Nellie.
The Free Press is nothing but warmed over turds. Pretending to be honest journalism but she is owned and controlled by Big Tech and they see the writing on the wall regarding outlets like NYT and WSJ etc. the free press only hires ex MSM journalists who have the proper liberal indoctrination in their training. Not a single true conservative voice And do not criticize Hilary too much or you will get put into time out.
They used to have Douglas Murray and occasionally Batya Ungar- Sargon, plus a few others I enjoyed but then they didn’t have my favorites any longer and I became bored and disillusioned so I cancelled my subscription. Don’t miss it at all.
I read Bari’s picks today and not one mention of this story. During the Biden years there was not one single mention of corruption until Joe was out of the race. The Free Press has great writers but I would never look to them for anything truthful
Correction, Matt: The Free Press (and Bari) is a joke.
I subscribed for a month recently to read Martin Gurri’s bit on Covid and another related article. Other than that it’s a snooze.
There’s an exceedingly long line of vapid sycophants eager to be spoonfed buckets of bullshit as long as the spoon is sterling.
Hey they're going to elect a communist for mayor. They're nothing less than just pure stupid.
Well he’s either a communist or a Muslim but he can’t be both because Communism is a secular cult and Islam is a fully integrated religious system.
lol I’m surprised they haven’t gone with “Ba’athist” yet. Since, ya know, that’s a socialist Arab party. And it sounds scary since it’s an Arabic word.
Matt seems to say that the Times is mistaken, when they’re deliberately, maliciously lying. And if they were to report on the story accurately now, they’d have to admit their previous lies.
Scott Adams says that the problem with the Russiagate story is its complexity. It’s easy to understand “Trump is a Russian asset” even though it’s a bald faced lie. Explaining how/why it’s a lie is complicated, and normal people (i.e. those who don’t subscribe to Racket, lol) don’t have the patience or the will to understand it, especially when the venerable, gag, Times repeats the lie with vigor, even now.
They need to be sued into oblivion.
Problem is, they're shameless.
Dear Yuri,
Tak, calling the valid Trump / Russia investigations (which were unfortunately somewhat influenced by probable KGB agent Igor Danchenko) "Russiagate" is a KGB*-encouraged disinfo op in-and-of-itself, especially since the only reason it's resurfacing now is to try to divert attention from Trump's relationship with convicted child sex-trafficker and pedophile Jefferey Epstein.
Let me know how that works out.
*Today's SVR and FSB
-- Tom
Tom, Grow up and learn how to think logically. If the original Epstein files could have been used to implicate Trump in any unseemly behavior Biden would have jumped at the chance and ordered Garland( thanks to Mitch for keeping him from becoming a Supreme) to release the information with great fanfare. Dems are the ones using it to distract from their Dumpster Fire.
The notion that Epstein related dirt on Trump would have been held in reserve through TWO election cycles (2020 and 2024) only to be deployed on 2025 is just laughable. To me it looks like a desperate smokescreen covering the Clinton-Obama-Brennan retreat.
Well put. They charge Trump with 95 felonies in four different federal and state courts, but they were holding Epstein back, just in case. Sure
I think ‘Thomas Graves’ might be a bot 🤖 ?
Sorry to disappoint you, Matty, but I'm a real person. Truth-be-told, the only reason I'm here is because my handlers told me to spread as much evil, evil, evil "Deep State" disinfo as possible.
Was Biden President when “Republican” South Florida U.S. Attorney, Alex Acosta — before he became Trump’s Secretary of Labor — gave Epstein “the deal of a lifetime” which also protected any possible coconspirators of Epstein?
No, the POTUS in 2008 (at time of Acosta led proceedings) was George W. Bush, who we MAGA disown, most especially for his WMD lies and tremendous amounts of blood and treasure wasted in the deserts of Iraq and Syria.
See how easy it is for an actual human to reply to a question? You should try it!
Anyway, check your programming. You will learn that Acosta was instructed by government handlers to go soft on Epstein plea deal at time because Jeffrey was said to be ‘intel asset adjacent’.
In my current conspiratorial thinking, Epstein minor child sex ring was (in part) to seal Financial Fixer deals between international intel and government agencies (think Iran-Contra) type deals. And likely Israel/Mossad was involved, and there is no way on God’s green earth that either major USA party is going to soil the only ‘democracy’ in the Near East by publicly exposing Epstein info that makes Israel look bad.
It’s amazing how fast and accurate we “bots” are becoming, huh? How's my syntax, grammar, vocabulary, and punctuation doing tonight? (I hope you don't mind the Oxford comma.)
Yeah, and so was Oleg Deripaska and probable KGB* agent Igor Danchenko. *Today’s SVR and FSB
You mean Igor Danchenko the source of the Steele Dossier? That Igor Danchenko? Congratulations, you get the UI award of the century.
100,000%
The correct spelling of his first name is ‘Jeffrey’. Get that part down Mr. Graves. In my current thinking the deep state spiked the Epstein punch against Trump just like they engineered Russia gate. And that’s why the docs are not released.
However, there are 2019 Epstein Grand Jury transcripts that Trump asked the DOJ to release. But so far a judge has blocked. Maybe those will come out after a lot of redactions. The public would then see what the government had on Epstein to put him away.
Are you in favor of those redacted Grand Jury transcript release?
Jeffrey.
As in Jeffrey "Yuri Nosenko Was a True Defector" Morley?
Good. Now, how about a reply to the question on 2019 GJ release, that Trump asked for. What say you? Do you support?
Will all of Epstein's pedophile clients, be they "Communist / Socialist / Globalist / 'Deep State' Dems," or "Patriotic 'Republicans'" be listed, or will the names of the "Patriotic 'Republicans'" be redacted? Tangentially, will the actual testimony of the victims be released, or just synopses?
I have no idea what’s in it. Except I expect it’s whatever the government had on Jeffrey to put him in jail for life, or a very long time.
The 2019 Grand Jury Epstein transcripts do exist.
Ask your programming why you cannot say yea or nay to their public release (after lawyers for those named within are black sharpie’s out)
I’m unsure if AI bot can give a reply to this quite simple question but I’m trying 🤷
Repeating the stories from the same people who have lied about Trump and Russia for most of a decade seems pretty close to the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
How many red (pardon the pun) pills did you take, anyway?
You don’t have to sign your comments. Crawl out of your ass. Your name is at the top of every comment Abraham Lincoln. Settle down.
I agree: “Give back your Pulitzer, you clowns!” The New York Times is a disgrace.
The oft-repeated phrase, “however much contempt you feel for the mainstream media, it’s not enough” is true as ever here. And this from someone who came up out of college in the early teens revering the Times as a serious paper. It took about two years of critical thinking from 2015-2017 for me to realize it was abject propaganda. It only gets worse by the year.
It’s gotten overt. The timeless way to lie in the media is by selection and emphasis. You leave out some things and make other things seem most important. Now even the NYT editorializes in its headlines. That’s new. My hypothesis is that reporters over rely on human sources because documents that could confirm or provide nuance aren’t available. Over classification began to make government secrecy seem normal, and the national security state made secrecy permanent. At the same time, dissent within the bureaucracy was shut down. We saw the party line enforced on the public at large, once the bureaucracy could be made to follow in lockstep. What does that do to reporters who rely on insider sources? They become totally dependent on what they are told, because there really isn’t a way to independently confirm or learn the context of what they hear. This much is baked into the cake, but the icing is the willingness of reporters to regurgitate what they are told as if it’s gospel. My hypothesis on that is that today’s reporters think of themselves as part of the ruling class they report on.
Wonderfully put. To summarize and elaborate on your points with an extended metaphor: populists began to besiege the Establishment’s decaying castle in 2010-2011 (Occupy/Tea Party) which loosely translates into Bernie/Trump 2016 campaign surges. The bureaucracy, emboldened by the Obama years, closes ranks against the populists. The MSM follows suit with their bureaucratic sources, raising the drawbridge behind them. Despite a furious battle that succeeds in slaying Bernie, Trump breaks through in November 2016. The Establishment then fights hand to hand throughout the heart of the castle to rid it of Trump via Russiagate and other ploys.
But now, after the 2024 election brought Trump back in through the gates even more forcefully than before, think that battle is finally turning against the Establishment. But it’s still messy hand to hand fighting inside the castle.
Very good!
'Too BIG to Fail' they said. On his way out the door Bush Jr. bailed out the fraudsters with the votes of Ds and then Obama added $800 Billion.
36 Trillion in debt and what do we have to show for it? Rusted tank hulls in foreign lands and NGOs rolling in dough, 'apparently'. DOGE our $ back.
“other evidence that did not come from Mr. Steele, much of which remains classified.” If it’s classified how would Savage
have any knowledge of its content.
I guess Savage thinks my father was part of the JFK assassination because he was I. Dallas on Nov 22, 1963.
As long as they despise Trump they will believe and promote anything. Even dishonest articles.
They really should return a lot of hardware, going back at least a century if not more.
NYT: This is the same entity that this week splashed a full-color photo of “a starving Gaza child” on its front page—omitting that this child is a victim of a terrible neurological disease, not “starvation”, and also cutting from the photographic image the child’s perfectly healthy brother.
I’ve given up on expecting “news” from it.
Headline from two days ago: "Why Rising Rates of Autism and ADHD Might Be a Good Sign".
Good grief!
You don't really think the NYT cares about getting this story "right," do you? C'mon, man!
Matt - if you want to understand why the media is what it is today, you need to deconstruct the collegiate journalism these people were taught for at least the last 30-40 years (maybe skipping the last 10 or so, because god only knows there). The path that became the mainstream versus those like yourself that didn't get a journalism degree. What qualifications does a college professor in journalism actually possess in order to teach journalism? What kind of "research" qualifies for a PhD dissertation? That's where the bullshit factory is built.
“Those that Can, DO; those that CAN’T DO… TEACH!”
Yeah, now put that into the context of teaching teachers and getting a doctorate in education.
...bunch of made up college majors so halfwits could get a degree...
And those that can’t teach, teach physical Ed.
Nope, they go into HR...
American education is a self sustaining feedback loop that never intersects with reality. in general, Teachers dont know shit except how to create more teachers whose only knowlege is how to work for the education system.
One thinks he knows...
He knows the output, and in rough terms the how; but the details? Think of his work describing the foibles of the finance world in Griftopia.
"The New York Times....a former newspaper."
Andrew Klavan
I cannot begin to tell you how many times I have attempted to convince people the NYT is a propaganda organ. I have probably tried to convince 25 or 30 people. I believe I have succeeded with two of those people, but maybe only because they were primed to start doubting the NYT a couple years ago when their 35-year-old son began insisting the NYT was propaganda.
To most of these people I have recommended Ashley Rindsberg's excellent book _The Gray Lady Winked: How the New York Times's Misreporting, Distortions and Fabrications Radically Alter History_. I doubt any of them have read it, though. They are so thoroughly indoctrinated that reading such a book is anathema to them. They simply cannot allow themselves to do it.
I read that book and it should be a nationwide realization that the NY Times is and always has been a garbage institution.
Why do you expect any credibility from the outlet playing Hamas's bitch?
Yes.
Matt. This is a religion you’re fighting. Keep up the great work!
The NYT lies about the revelations that Tulsi is putting out there and the WSJ just ignores it. Not one single word.
There is a glory hole in Manhattan where all the DNC, CIA, FBI slime and HRC go to unload. On the other side of the wall is Charlie Savage with mouth wide open…
That is a graphic I did not need, though your point seems accurate.
LO fucking L
Ok, that comment is way over the top.
And I applaud you for it.
Is the world getting worse, or are we just becoming more aware of the crap that was always already there?
Sincere question, with thanks in advance for responses!
well slavery is over. hard to notice since the democrats never stop talking about it.
I think it's always been like this, but we see it more publicly now. We still can't seem to stop it though
I think: 1. We are becoming more aware of crap that was always there, and also 2. Since Covid began, the elite psychopaths have been piling on much more crap than they had been piling on prior to Covid.
I have asked myself the same question for some time now...
By almost every metric life for people has improved by miles in the last century, especially. Infant mortality figures, health, literacy, literacy among women (remains a challenge). Death from wars is much lower than during the 20th century. Cancer diagnosis and treatment. Morbidity is the greatest challenge we face in the west - when we choose illness, ill-health, and early death from questionable lifestyle choices.
There are lots of Boomers here - remember what going to the dentist - used to be like. Better today, no? Much, much better!
Anyone expecting the legacy media to apologize for being the lap dog to the deep state will be disappointed.
It's integral to it.
If there is any justice in this world, job seekers citing their past tenure at the NYT will soon join those claiming a Harvard pedigree.
BTW, one disgusting thing that still goes unmentioned is the way the Clinton campaign distracted everyone from the actual content of the Wikileaks email exposure by making it a question of the leak source. It was briefly noted at the time that no one whose emails were exposed actually denied that they were authentic. And even today, slimeballs like John Podesta still hold down responsible (and no doubt highly-compensated) positions in this sleazy bureaucracy.
My head is spinning. There have been so many revelations and blatant CYA's this past week, it is refreshing to read such clear and detailed analyses by Matt. Thanks Matt for helping unravel this riddle, wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. But what are we supposed to expect when out Intelligence Services are involved and spinning to a willing Press.
Nobel Peace Prize for Trump and a Pulitzer for Taibbi!
With respect - neither prize carries any value - as long as Obama and the NYT hold theirs.
No argument. Lots & lots of wrongs need righting. It's thrilling to see this possibility moving in the right direction for a change.