After journalists Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss and Michael Shellenberger won a $100,000 award from the National Journalism Center / DAO for excellence in investigative journalism regarding the Twitter Files, WikiPedia editors threw a fit – with one, who goes by “Specifico”, removing all mention of the award until other editors were in ‘consensus for inclusion.’
Bari, Michael and I are very grateful for this significant award, which we hope will provide encouragement to future independent journalists to take on unpopular subjects and confront powerful institutions.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) November 2, 2023
First, from Taibbi’s acceptance speech:
More than two dozen reporters worked on the Twitter Files at different times, including Lee Fang, Paul Thacker, David Zweig, Aaron Maté, Matt Farwell, and many others, across the political spectrum. Journalists from left-leaning publications and reporters with conservative backgrounds both worked on this story, which was unique enough to employ pseudonymous citizen journalists like “Techno Fog” and Pulitzer Prize winner Susan Schmidt. Susan is here tonight, and has a new Twitter Files piece coming out on Twitter and Racket in the coming days.
This was apparently too much for Wikipedia – which has been the de-facto leftist ministry of bullshit for years.
An editor who goes by “SPECIFICO” took it upon themselves to nuke the DAO award from Taibbi’s profile, writing “I reverted the addition of this item. PPlease see the reason im my edit summary. It should not be re-added prior to consensus for inclusion.”
2/2 This is what happened first. Report is they have relented: pic.twitter.com/vgXMtb7toJ
— Walter Kirn (@walterkirn) November 6, 2023
Another editor replied: “I am curious. How does one determine that an award is not “credible”?”
Specifico, as it were, is a total weirdo. Shocker, we know.
If you’d like to experience more of Wikipedia’s legendary professionalism and integrity, I highly recommend clicking on SPECIFICO’s username to view their personal page.
Behold, the “Master Editor” (which means they have 42,000+ edits!) who removed the Dao Prize mention: pic.twitter.com/pdB0uqSGQ4
— Casey Muratori (@cmuratori) November 6, 2023
Fortunately, less-woke minds prevailed, and the award is now visible on Taibbi’s page.
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