CNN Covers ‘Twitter Files’ Dump In Detailed Debate — Is It Just Hot Garbage OR Hot Garbage That’s Still Worth Talking About?

CNN’s Oliver Darcy and Donie O’Sullivan covered the Elon Musk/Matt Taibbi “Twitter Files” dump in great detail by trashing it for a solid seven-plus minutes, while also explaining how we should still talk about the issues because they’re important and shouldn’t be covered in this terrible fashion.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk recently authorized and assisted in the release of an information dump by Matt Taibbi that has been taken up by those concerned about the treatment of the Hunter Biden laptop story, but panned by many others as an overhyped and misleading packaging of cherry-picked internal documents that did not amount to much upon further scrutiny.

You can put me in the latter category, along with the wise and attractive founder of Mediaite, Dan Abrams, who said of the first Hunter Biden-related tranche, “It is stunning that with access to all the internal e-mails at Twitter that they don’t have a single smoking gun that implicates a government leader or even any campaign in wrongdoing. Even before Musk’s characterization of what was there, I expected there would be something more damning…from someone relevant.”

Conservatives whined and whined about how the mainstream media was suppressing the story by ignoring it, but be careful what you wish for. On Thursday morning’s edition of CNN This Morning, Darcy and O’Sullivan gave the story a good going-over — but not before co-anchor Poppy Harlow pre-crapped all over it in her extremely accurate and still-generous intro.

“Musk selected a handful of journalists unaffiliated with major, credible news organizations with whom he has shared internal Twitter systems and communications that seem to focus on some of Twitter’s most high-profile and sometimes controversial content moderation decisions. These files, which the selected journalists then tweet out, appear to call into question the integrity of the company’s former leadership while also riling up Twitter’s right-leaning, some of them right-leaning, users,” Harlow said, before reading Jack Dorsey’s statements pushing back on the dump.

You’ll be seeing someone on Newsbusters whining about that intro soon, I’m sure. Please credit me for the transcript, guys.

Having established the entire enterprise as a not-credible and cherry-picked sap to right-wingers, Harlow tossed to Darcy and O’Sullivan, who explained how even with the aid of those completely disqualifying factors, the “Twitter Files” still didn’t amount to shit. Or did amount to shit. Whichever is worse.

Here’s a sampling:

DARCY: I thought what was really noteworthy was that Elon Musk’s hand-picked reporter, Matt Taibbi, said that there was no evidence of government involvement in trying to suppress this story…

KAITLAN COLLINS: it’s the way it’s being covered. That is so much of this conversation. And you wrote in your newsletter the other night saying that the reason most news organizations aren’t up in arms, that it’s not leading every hour on CNN this morning, is because the releases have largely not contained any revelatory information. You weren’t the only one who said that, though. Gerard Baker, who is the conservative former top editor of The Journal, said they don’t tell us anything new. There’s not any kind of shocking revelation about censorship or anything like that…

O’SULLIVAN: One thing that is a bit frustrating about these files, is that it presents this as a huge revelation, “we never knew that Twitter was talking to the FBI.” They were putting up — Silicon Valley — they were putting up press releases about the meetings they were having with them…

DARCY: I think a lot of the “Twitter Files,” I mean, more transparency is great… I think the problem here, though, is that Elon Musk is effectively serving as a gatekeeper for this information. He is not giving it to newsrooms. He is giving it to hand-picked journalists who are then agreeing to the condition, at least one condition of tweeting out the files instead of posting many stories.

KAITLAN COLLINS: It all comes back to the private jet, as the old saying goes. But with this, the transparency matters and how he makes decisions matters. And now he’s changed the rules basically to justify removing an account that was tracking his private jet…

You might get the idea that I approve of this coverage but you would be wrong, because along with their very accurate trashing of the info dump, they kept saying shit like this:

COLLINS: There’s not any kind of shocking revelation about censorship or anything like that. But it’s still important to talk about it. Right?

…

DARCY: I think a lot of the “Twitter Files,” I mean, more transparency is great.

…

O’SULLIVAN: That being said, I do think, you know, we shouldn’t totally dismiss what’s in this already. I mean, part of the job we’ve been doing the past few years is holding these tech companies accountable. And I think, you know, the power they wield is huge and kicking a former, a then-president of the United States off the platform is a very, very big deal.

And when Don Lemon tried to inject a sensible dismissal of this crap, Harlow argued with him:

DON LEMON: Yeah, I just I don’t know. I just I kind of don’t care. I know. It sounds awful. Listen, I care about Twitter when it comes to people who live in countries where they’re suppressed, speech and riots and that kind of thing. It’s a good news aggregator. It can be used, especially for people in this industry. But this whole idea about, you know, people being suppressed and whatever and you have such a — the loudest, craziest voices on Twitter that are not suppressed when you see, you know, Donald Trump Jr. tweeting a hammer and underwear about someone who is could have been killed, I just go, stop and figure out what’s important.

POPPY HARLOW: Doesn’t it matter? I hear you.

DON LEMON: Yeah, it does matter. I mean, if we’re not but we’re not…

POPPY HARLOW: Big powerful company. If they use their —

DON LEMON: Listen, no one has a right to be on Twitter. Okay? You can be on Twitter and not be on Twitter. It’s a private company. And if you know, they can set the rules that they want to set. I just feel like especially especially this whole Hunter Biden thing, it’s like a Rorschach test for political like what side, what you believe politically. So for me, it doesn’t interest me in that way.

But the entire point of the segment is that the “Twitter Files” — despite a disqualifying bias in its process — didn’t shed any new light on any of the topics cited as “important” in this segment.

None of the “but still…” points that were brought up had anything to do with what is actually in the “Twitter Files,” but those types of statements lend a “both sides” veneer to the topic that suggests the info dump might not be total crap. So does broadcasting an 8-minute segment on it after right-wingers whined about it for a week.

I applaud CNN for pointing out how utterly lacking in credibility and news value the “Twitter Files” oppo dump is — I just wish they had left it at that.

Watch above via CNN This Morning.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.