What's Happened to (Formerly) Leftist Media?
A Q&A with Eoin Higgins, author of Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left.
John Warner
Apr 29, 2025
There was a time where I was among the readers cheering the loudest for Matt Taibbi as he kicked the financial industry in the teeth for their wasteful and rapacious ways. Fast forward some years and Taibbi is (seemingly) suddenly Elon Musk’s wingman on promulgating the bogus “Twitter files” narrative of widespread, coordinated government censorship on social media during the Biden presidency. (Taibbi and Musk have since parted ways as allies.)
What happened? The answers are found in Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left by Eoin Higgins, which I reviewed this past Sunday at the Chicago Tribune.
I was pleased that Eoin Higgins was open to some questions about the book and where we might be going in this new media landscape.
Eoin Higgins
is a journalist and historian, and you can find his work at the Washington Post, the Intercept, Appeal, New Republic, Nation, FAIR, and elsewhere, including his newsletter
The Flashpoint
.
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John Warner: I want to start by helping to orient the audience to the thesis of Owned. What have the billionaires done in regards to the media ecosystem, and why does this matter to us?
Eoin Higgins: To use a term I think they’d like, they’ve disrupted it. News media now is a much different animal than it was even a decade ago—it’s more decentralized, it’s weaker, it’s more dependent on the largesse of the extremely wealthy. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, not the decentralization, anyway, but overall it’s contributing to a chaotic information environment that ultimately only benefits Silicon Valley interests.
JW: What are those interests? Is it as simple as power and money, or do they have truly bigger aims like “disrupting” democracy - something Thiel seems enthusiastic about?
EH: It varies, and I’m speculating, but I think that if you look at the politics they’re endorsing and the people they’re supporting, it’s all part of an overall effort to shift the country’s discourse to the right so that they have more pliant politicians in Washington. They’re happy to adapt to whichever side is in power to maintain their position, but it’s clear that the right is more business friendly and sycophantic to power (always has been).
JW: In my review I remarked at one point about how the way I described your book ran the risk of making it sound conspiratorial, but that in reality, it’s sort of the opposite of that. All of these things have happened pretty deliberately, and in plain sight. Has this been part of a longstanding larger plan by these tech figures, or has it evolved over time as society and the information atmosphere shifts and new opportunities for influence arise?
EH: Yes and no. For Peter Thiel, the billionaire financier who co-founded PayPal with Elon Musk, went on to co-found Palantir, invested in Facebook, etc, this has been a longstanding goal. He’s been driven to change politics and media since college. On the other hand, someone like Musk isn’t acting with much of a rational plan and just blusters his way through everything—and his politics haven’t always been far right. So it depends.
JW: This has me wondering which is more dangerous. Elon’s bluster has turned Twitter into a cesspool that is no longer the digital town square (so to speak) but is a vector for misinformation, conspiracies and organizing among some very bad elements. Thiel seems driven to create a “mainstream” media consistent with his views. Is one worse? Or, what do you see as the dangers, going forward?
EH: Worse is subjective, the more interesting question to me is which one has staying power and I think that’s clearly Thiel’s plan. Musk may have destroyed Twitter, more or less, and turned it into a far-right cesspool—good term—that promotes his ideological beliefs. But how long can that last? I’d argue not that long, really, people don’t need Twitter, especially with alternatives like Bluesky popping up and ably filling a lot of the news function that we’ve lost. Larger and more diverse media concerns like what Thiel is funding have staying power, especially with celebrity journalists to point to.
JW: Part of this story is that these “loudest voices” are particular personalities as well, they’re a mix of talented, ambitious, and attention-seeking in a way that has marked their entire careers. Taibbi was a kind of Hunter Thompson of Russia before coming back home to pillory Goldman Sachs for Rolling Stone. Greenwald has a strong self-righteous streak that was often an asset to his work and success. A newer entrant, Bari Weiss, has been seeking public attention - and private approval by “elites” - since she was a college undergraduate. In earlier times, these people would’ve maybe been outsider cranks, but they figured out how to use the institutional imprimatur to then launch their individual “brands.”
EH: It’s interesting because they each had different paths. Taibbi is the son of a newsman, Greenwald got into blogging at a time when you could make a name for yourself, Weiss climbed the ladder at WSJ and NYT. One thing they have in common, you’re right, is knowing how to leverage their fame for added power and influence.
JW: You have me thinking about the nature of fame and attention. We’ve always had “celebrity” journalists - George Clooney is starring on Broadway as Edward R. Murrow right now - but in the past, these figures became famous for their journalism. They also were more general purpose celebrities, widely known, while Taibbi/Greenwald/Weiss, as prominent as they are, are still niche figures. Do you see any ways this might affect their journalism or the field of journalism in general?
EH: I do think the need for attention and fame is a motivator. Years ago, I analyzed Glenn’s tweets about Fox News before and after they started having him on and it was night and day. That indicates a role for the pursuit of fame in why these people are doing what they’re doing. And really, that makes sense, you go where the audience is. But for these individuals, they’re far more interested in becoming influencers than breaking news at this point, and I think that’s an important distinction to make.
JW: Ultimately, one of the challenges faced by these writers is a form of “audience capture” where they have to give the people who fund them what they want to hear. But who should we think of as the audience in these cases, the tech-industry funders or the readers - like here at Substack - who pay for their individual subscriptions?
EH: Look, I wouldn’t say that they don’t have a real audience for what they’re saying. Clearly they do. But the wealthy benefactors who are funding their work have their own interests and goals and I think it’s indisputable that these journalists have adopted their work and focus to appeal to the right wing interests of Silicon Valley. On the other hand, as I note in the book, Greenwald at least has taken some positions (notably his opposition to Israel’s war on Gaza) that have lost him audience, however temporarily. So it’s complicated.
JW: This interview will be published on a newsletter on the Substack platform, the origins of which you discuss in the book, and which I write about skeptically as a sustainable future for meaningful writing in my book because I don’t think the platform makes sense as a business proposition for its owners or, really, for readers who are limited in how many subscriptions they can afford or writers they want to support. Do you have any thoughts about the future of platforms and writers?
EH: Broadly, I think this is a moment for media where things are undergoing a major shift. I don’t know what form it will end up taking, but I do believe this is a temporary state of affairs and something better will come out of it. We just need to get through this information environment with as little damage as possible, which is easier said than done.
JW: And finally, my last question for everyone. What’s one book you recommend that most people will not have heard of before?
EH: Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez, a supernatural horror story that’s set in Argentina during and after the dictatorship. |
