Taibbi is saying that the underlying justification for the article is a nothingburger. He is saying that sometimes the identity of someone who prefers to remain anonymous is relevant to a story, and journalists should investigate if it is. But in this case, the woman’s identity doesn’t add anything to the story that people didn’t already know — that the person behind the TikTok is conservative, and therefore the journalist had no excuse to reveal her identity, so the purpose of the article was pure doxxing.
Yes. That’s true but the actual fallout from all this is far from a nothing burger. It is an act of pure evil by a psycho who hoped to get someone else seriously harmed.