Democrats Deride the Twitter Files Reporters as ‘So-Called Journalists’

The House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government held a hearing Thursday on the Twitter Files, giving independent journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger the opportunity to present their reporting to Congress.

The Twitter Files, which show that multiple arms of the federal government—including the FBI, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the State Department, and the White House under both Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden—pressured social media companies to restrict speech, are of some concern to Republican lawmakers; it was Rep. Jim Jordan (R–Ohio) who invited Taibbi and Shellenberger to attend. Since government action is at the core of this insidious push for censorship—which is also present at Facebook, as Reason‘s investigation has shown—it is appropriate for Congress to probe, and hopefully, to limit, the federal bureaucracy’s ability to shape the rules of online discourse.

Frustratingly, the Democrats who participated in the hearing on Thursday could not have cared less about the federal government’s role in promoting social media censorship. Indeed, the Democratic representatives involved in the proceedings turned their fire on Taibbi and Shellenberger, not bothering to hold back their disdain for the pair.

Del. Stacey Plaskett (D–V.I.) got the ball rolling by referring to Taibbi and Shellenberger as “so-called journalists.” (Taibbi responded by pointing out that he has won multiple journalism awards, including the National Magazine Award.) Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D–Texas) seized upon the idea that perhaps the pair—she actually referred to them as part of a “threesome” with journalist Bari Weiss—had perhaps been paid to provide such testimony. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D–Fla.) took this line of inquiry a bit further, ludicrously suggesting that somehow Taibbi’s r