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

Aloha…

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

MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan Gets Basic Facts Wrong on DHS Content Moderation Partnership

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elected to make a federal case about a botched acronym — covers a lot of the key ground here, among other things using unpublished TF material.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.