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Welcoming Lee Fang to Substack

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Welcoming Lee Fang to Substack

The veteran reporter and #TwitterFiles contributor leaves the Intercept and comes to Substack, kicking off with a fact-check of last week’s MSNBC fiasco

Matt Taibbi
Apr 12, 2023
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Aloha…

New Substack contributor Lee Fang has his inaugural piece out. Obviously, it’s relevant to readers of this site:

Lee Fang
MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan Gets Basic Facts Wrong on DHS Content Moderation Partnership
MSNBC pundit Mehdi Hasan, in a series of tweets over the last five days, has repeatedly claimed that Matt Taibbi “deliberately & under oath misrepresented” the facts when he testified to Congress last month. Hasan linked to a video of Taibbi's testimony, in which the Racket News journalist noted that "Twitter executives did not distinguish between [the …
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2 months ago · 135 likes · 11 comments · Lee Fang

Lee is one of the country’s best investigative reporters. At one time, in fact, I was worried he might be the last real one in the country. He’s written on everything from campaign finance to investments made via the CIA’s venture capital arm to, more recently, stories about the ongoing activities of the “Truth Cops” at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), at the Department of Homeland Security. He also wrote a key #TwitterFiles thread, about the Pentagon’s use of phony social media accounts.

The Intercept should have built around his brand of journalism, but Lee’s tendency to hit in both directions and maintain his own point of view on things seemed to complicate his stay there. Out from under those pressures, he should do great work at Substack.

As for this subject: to paraphrase something I once read in an article quoting a Jets fan, “There’s enough hate in my heart to start a car.” But I’m technically on vacation still and Lee — who again was writing about these issues before MSNBC elected to make a federal case about a botched acronym — covers a lot of the key ground here, among other things using unpublished TF material. More later on that. For now, congratulations to Lee on a long-overdue move, and welcome to the land of the media free.

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Gnome Chonky
Writes Yawny's Digest
Apr 12·edited Apr 12

It's gotten to the point where any reporters WITHOUT a Substack will be understood as having been captured by corporate or governmental masters.

Now if only Substack would create some kind of bundling deal. This is getting expensive for us plebs.

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No Use For a Name
Apr 12

Welcome Lee, you legend.

Matt, this is the worst not-vacationing since the Civil War!! Go drink some tallboys and get out the Steely Dan records. ;)

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