Matt Taibbi On The Sad State Of The Media
The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan
Andrew Sullivan
4.6 • 836 Ratings
🗓️ 20 January 2023
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The man himself. Taibbi is an investigative reporter in the Gonzo tradition who had a long career at Rolling Stone magazine, where he won the 2008 National Magazine Award for Columns and Commentary. He’s written several bestselling books, including Griftopia and The Great Derangement, and now runs a wildly successful substack, TK News. Almost every less-talented hack hates him.
For two clips of our convo — how the MSM condescends to its audience, and what the Twitter Files achieved — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: Matt’s madcap stories reporting in Russia, him ditching a newspaper job to play pro basketball in Mongolia, the Substack refugees of 2020, being biased and balanced, woke-checking over fact-checking, reporting uncomfortable truths, the insularity of Ivy League journos, lauding Wayne Barrett and Mike Kinsley, dinging Jon Chait and Rachel Maddow, the misguided coverage of trans kids, the Atlanta spa shootings, the reckless overreactions to Trump, Russiagate, and taking psychedelics for a gay leather event. Good times.
Peruse the Dishcast archives for another episode you might enjoy — 102 and counting. The podcast is part of The Weekly Dish on Substack. To subscribe and receive the weekly emails and full offerings, go here: https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/subscribe
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thank you. |
| 0:03.0 | I'm going to Hi there, and welcome to a special episode of the dishcast. |
| 0:33.5 | This time with a great and powerful, as Joe Rogan would say, Matt Taibi. |
| 0:38.8 | It's special not just because Matt's here and we really get into the down and dirty of the media, |
| 0:44.3 | but it's special because for the first time, we're only going to give the first half of the podcast away for free. |
| 0:54.2 | And we're going to keep the entire podcast, all of it, just for our paid subscribers |
| 0:58.7 | as a way to thank them for subscribing for two years. |
| 1:03.6 | I think after those two years, we've finally got a rhythm. |
| 1:06.5 | I think my interviewing style has, insofar as I have any, improved. |
| 1:10.0 | And we think we got enough momentum to actually ask people to pay for the whole thing. |
| 1:17.5 | I'm still going to give it for free for the first 45 minutes, |
| 1:20.2 | but we'd like to encourage you to help us by subscribing. |
| 1:23.5 | How to do that? |
| 1:25.1 | Well, halfway through today's chat, there'll be a break, a little musical break. |
| 1:29.6 | And if you're a paid subscriber and you want to continue listening for the following 45 minutes, |
| 1:34.8 | don't worry. You got it. Just go to andrewsullivan.com forward slash listen, L-I-S-T-E-N, |
| 1:43.9 | to get the whole podcast. |
| 1:46.1 | You could do it right now before you listen to the podcast, |
| 1:48.8 | and if you do, nothing will change. |
| 1:51.6 | You can just listen to the whole thing the way you normally do. |
| 1:55.6 | If you haven't paid for a subscription |
| 1:57.3 | and you're listening to all of these podcasts for free, |
... |
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