Thread by @davereaboi

DailyBeast DM’d me to alert me that the useless rag ran a piece by Jeff Bezos’ investigator. It’s more poorly reported than Rachel Maddow or Louise Mensch scoops. Look at the evidence given—I wonder how many of these people work for Qatar?

As the writer knows, the credibility of the investigation rises and falls based on the names of the “experts” they consulted—which are not named.

I’ll bet cash money that they’re Hamilton68 conspiracy nuts and former Trump people who became whores for Qatar. Plenty of those.

Basically, “we spoke to people who really, really hate the Saudis (and some who get paid by their rival, Qatar)—but trust us, these are really, really super duper experts on a thing that really happened!”

They’re alleging a hacking—and then rather than give the opinion of forensic specialists (the only people who’d be in the position to know what happened), they ask people if they think MBS is really mean, and he totally would be a guy who’d hack.

This is so unserious.

I hope a lot of you have leaned, over the last 2 years, how to read bullshit that’s made to look like journalism.

I would bet a decent amount of money this is total nonsense. Why?

(1) it’s running at the Daily Beast as an op/ed by Bezos’ “investigator”—who’s been screaming it was the Saudis based on no evidence.

(2) Only 1 named “expert” consulted, and that guy has zero hacking expertise.

(1a) Op/ed by “investigator” with little cred in the Daily Beast is *not* exactly NYT or WaPo or Politico or somewhere where even a corrupt journalist hack would attempt some fact-checking or corroboration. If they rejected, wow—that’s bad.

(1b) you’re telling me Jeff Bezos’ PR team don’t know how to do a “legit” news story in a so-called reputable outlet? Of course they do. there wasn’t any reason to release this nonsense like this, if they had any takers.

(1c) Personally I think the investigator is preying on Bezos’ hate for the Saudis and is basically Louise Mensch’ing him out of millions.