It was, on the floor, a typical instance of reporting the information: a journalist obtains inside paperwork from a significant company, shedding gentle on a political dispute that flared within the waning days of the 2020 presidential race.

However on the subject of Elon Musk and Twitter, nothing is typical.

The so-called Twitter Information, launched Friday night by the unbiased journalist Matt Taibbi, set off a firestorm amongst pundits, media ethicists and lawmakers in each events. It additionally supplied a window into the fractured fashionable panorama of stories, the place a narrative’s reception is commonly formed by readers’ assumptions in regards to the motivations of each reporters and topics.

The tempest started when Mr. Musk teased the discharge of inside paperwork that he mentioned would reveal the story behind Twitter’s 2020 resolution to limit posts linking to a report within the New York Put up about Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son, Hunter.

Mr. Musk, who has accused tech firms of censorship, then pointed readers to the account of Mr. Taibbi, an iconoclast journalist who shares a few of Mr. Musk’s disdain for the mainstream information media. Revealed within the type of a prolonged Twitter thread, Mr. Taibbi’s report included pictures of e-mail exchanges amongst Twitter officers deliberating easy methods to deal with dissemination of the Put up story on their platform.

Mr. Musk and Mr. Taibbi framed the exchanges as proof of rank censorship and pernicious affect by liberals. Many others — even some ardent Twitter critics — had been much less impressed, saying the exchanges merely confirmed a bunch of executives earnestly debating easy methods to take care of an unconfirmed information report that was based mostly on info from a stolen laptop computer.

And as with many fashionable information tales, the Twitter Information had been rapidly weaponized in service of a dizzying variety of pre-existing arguments.

The Fox Information host Tucker Carlson, who usually accuses liberals of stifling speech, made the declare that the “paperwork present a systemic violation of the First Modification, the most important instance of that in fashionable historical past.” Home Republicans, who’ve known as for an investigation into the enterprise dealings of Hunter Biden, asserted with no proof that the report confirmed systemic collusion between Twitter and aides to Joe Biden, who was then the Democratic nominee. (Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief govt on the time, later reversed the choice to dam the Put up story and advised Congress it had been a mistake.)

Former Twitter executives, who’ve lamented Mr. Musk’s chaotic stewardship of the corporate, cited the paperwork’ launch as one more signal of recklessness. Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of belief and security, mentioned that publicizing unredacted paperwork — a few of which included the names and e-mail addresses of Twitter officers — was “a basically unacceptable factor to do” and positioned individuals “in hurt’s method.” (Mr. Musk later mentioned that, in hindsight, “I feel we should always have excluded some e-mail addresses.”)

The central function of Mr. Taibbi, a polarizing determine in journalism circles, set off its personal uproar.

As soon as a significant voice of the political left, Mr. Taibbi rose to prominence by presenting himself as an unencumbered fact teller. He’s maybe finest identified for labeling Goldman Sachs a “vampire squid” in an article that galvanized public outrage towards Wall Road. However his commentary about former President Donald J. Trump diverged from the views of many Democrats — for example, he was skeptical of claims of collusion between Russia and Mr. Trump’s marketing campaign — and his fan base shifted.

On Friday, Mr. Taibbi wrote that his thread about Twitter was “based mostly upon 1000’s of inside paperwork obtained by sources at Twitter.” Mr. Musk had beforehand hinted about revealing info on Twitter’s dealing with of the Hunter Biden report. On Friday, shortly earlier than Mr. Taibbi’s report, Mr. Musk wrote, “This will probably be superior” and added a popcorn emoji, the common on-line image of fervent anticipation. Mr. Taibbi additionally mentioned he agreed “to sure situations” in change for the paperwork, however didn’t present particulars.

Skeptics of Mr. Taibbi seized on what seemed to be an orchestrated disclosure. “Think about volunteering to do on-line PR work for the world’s richest man on a Friday night time, in service of nakedly and cynically right-wing narratives, after which pretending you’re talking fact to energy,” the MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan wrote in a Twitter publish.

Mr. Taibbi clapped again on Saturday, writing: “Trying ahead to going via all of the tweets complaining about ‘PR for the richest man on earth,’ and seeing what number of of them have run tales for nameless sources on the FBI, CIA, the Pentagon, White Home, and many others.”

Mr. Musk and Mr. Taibbi didn’t reply to requests for remark.

That Mr. Musk is a fan of Mr. Taibbi, who left Rolling Stone to begin a publication on Substack, is not any massive shock; Mr. Musk usually hails the virtues of citizen journalism. On Saturday, in a stay audio session on Twitter, Mr. Musk mentioned he was disillusioned that extra mainstream media shops had not picked up Mr. Taibbi’s reporting.

The New York Instances requested copies of the paperwork from Mr. Musk, however didn’t obtain a response.

Mr. Musk mentioned on Saturday that he had additionally given paperwork to Bari Weiss, a former editor and columnist at The Instances whose Substack publication, Frequent Sense, payments itself as an alternative choice to conventional information shops. Ms. Weiss declined to touch upon Sunday.

The commotion has additionally generated some odd bedfellows. Mr. Taibbi as soon as in contrast former President George W. Bush to a “donkey.” On Sunday, his reporting was defended by the Home Republican chief, Consultant Kevin McCarthy, throughout an interview on Fox Information. “They’re attempting to discredit an individual for telling the reality,” Mr. McCarthy mentioned of Mr. Musk.

Maybe the one universally accepted takeaway from the discharge of the Twitter Information was a sentiment that Mr. Taibbi himself expressed, in a headline on his Substack web page that supplied a preview of his upcoming posts.

“Word to readers,” Mr. Taibbi wrote. “It’s about to get bizarre in right here.”