Matt Taibbi has been receiving much criticism from Goldman Sach supporter lately.  This article from Columbia Journalism Review shows just how disingenuous the criticism really is.

I think it most certainly will be. But in any case, mainstreamers dismiss him at their peril. Taibbi represents a challenge to the conventional business press’s increasingly narrow focus, its incrementalism, its concern with petty scoops at the expense of asking the big questions of the big institutions on its beat.

The lesson of Taibbi is that if conventional business journalism is unwilling or unable to step back and take in the sweep of this crisis, and the systemic distortions that underlie it, somebody else will.

What the Columbia piece does not spend any time researching is the vested interest the main stream media (like Gasparino and the Wall Street Journal’s Heidi Moore) have in protecting Goldman.  For example, Gasparino admits he was “invited” to the Goldman inner sanctum and shown the light (and presumably consequences of criticizing Goldman Sachs- like no future scoops from powerful Goldman.  A couple of days later Gasparino’s criticism of Taibbi begins. Coinicidence? –we think not.  Taibbi’s critics get much more revenue from Goldman Sachs than they will ever get from Matt Taibbi or Rolling Stone, so it’s easy to see who gets thrown under the bus.  But the truth in Taibbi’s story is mainstream outside of the financial community, as well as within it and there’s now little the vested interests can do about it.

Check out Matt Taibi’s blog on the aftermath of his piece in Rolling Stone. Here’s a snippet, but read the whole thing.  Goldman Sachs, Rapes and Pillages’ obfuscation is incredible – to say the least:

Actually I did contact Goldman and gave the bank every opportunity to respond to the factual issues in the article. I’m bringing this up because their decision not to comment on any of those questions was actually pretty interesting.

So what I decided to do the first time I approached them was to send a short list of simple factual questions.

I intentionally put a lot of yes/no questions on that list. If the underlying thinking behind any of those questions was faulty, it would have been easy enough for them to say so and to educate us as to the truth. Instead, here is the response that we got:

“Your questions are couched in such a way that presupposes the conclusions and suggests the people you spoke with have an agenda or do not fully understand the issues.”