James Surowiecki is an intelligent guy with a distinguished history in journalism and writing. His most famous work was his 2004 book The Wisdom of Crowds, which I enjoyed thoroughly. It was carefully researched and well written, and helped reveal the failures of the “experts” and why those failures are so common. I would still recommend the book. 

Unfortunately, Surowiecki has become a political hack, and a propagandist for the Narrative, and it makes me sad. He has joined the crowd of journalists who are rising up against reporters who do the actual work of reporting rather than being mere megaphones for the Elite. To me, at least, his decline from an interesting and occasionally extraordinary writer to his current hackery is disturbing, as it mirrors the descent of our entire journalist class into mouthpieces for the state.

Surowiecki has joined the entire journalistic establishment in attacking both the exposure of the contents of the Hunter Biden laptop contents and the exposure of Twitter’s collusion with the MSM and Biden crowd to suppress the story until it no longer mattered. The New York Post was literally kicked off of Twitter for a while for having published the story, solely to punish them for their infraction against The Narrative.

Certainly a newspaper could quote short snippets of the emails, and summarize their contents, under fair use. But how was the publication of Hunter's private photos, to which he owned legal right, and the reproduction of his emails not a plain copyright violation?

— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) December 7, 2022

He is really going to run with that? Honestly?

Imagine, for a moment, Surowiecki as a financial journalist is handed whistleblower documents about a huge financial scandal at a hedge fund. Insider trading or a scheme to defraud clients. Does he seriously believe that the “copyright” for those documents, being held by the firm, would prevent him from publishing them? Or should?

Of course not. Not even close. No serious reporter would even think about that absurd argument for a moment. And no wrongdoer would consider suing the publisher for violating their ownership rights to the information or documents, because they would be laughed out of court. It is absurd on its face.

Surowiecki goes even further than that, insinuating that Glenn Greenwald and other non-MSM journalists are wrong to cover the Twitter files because of the “legitimate concerns” that Russia would interfere in the 2016 elections. Again, that is absurd on its face. Not a single MSM reporter would have simply dismissed–often and vociferously–a laptop from Donald Trump Jr. with similar contents. Human trafficking, illegal drug use, prostitution, violations of gun laws, tax evasion, and funneling ill-gotten foreign payments for work never done. Does Surowiecki believe that such a bombshell revealing massive corruption by Trump’s family should have been covered up?

Again, of course not. The media spent years promoting proven disinformation invented and provided by the Clinton campaign, with the NYT and Washington Post receiving a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on Clinton misinformation. He even admits in a later tweet that Trump didn’t collude with Russia, yet he never once chastises the media for promoting a false Narrative to harm Trump. Including, perhaps especially, to sway the 2020 election to a candidate he prefers.

The fact that Trump did not collude with Russia has somehow been interpreted (or deliberately misrepresented) to mean that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 election with the goal of helping Trump win. But it did, and the FBI was right to be concerned it would again in 2020.

— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) December 7, 2022

Surowiecki, a once really good writer, has allowed himself to become a political hack with zero integrity. He is engaged in the same attacking the messenger that everybody else in the MSM has practiced. They don’t like the news, so they call those who bring the news to them fakers.

It is pathetic.