Oct. 22, 2018 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
41:36
4229 The Temptations of Twitter: Understanding Propaganda
"The temptations of Twitter: Why social media is still a minefield for journalistsPolitico editor-in-chief John Harris became the most recent high-profile journalist to slip up on Twitter, where there is a temptation to stray from reporting..."▶️ Donate Now: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate▶️ Sign Up For Our Newsletter: http://www.fdrurl.com/newsletterYour support is essential to Freedomain Radio, which is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by making a one time donation or signing up for a monthly recurring donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate▶️ 1. Donate: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate▶️ 2. Newsletter Sign-Up: http://www.fdrurl.com/newsletter▶️ 3. On YouTube: Subscribe, Click Notification Bell▶️ 4. Subscribe to the Freedomain Podcast: http://www.fdrpodcasts.com▶️ 5. Follow Freedomain on Alternative Platforms🔴 Bitchute: http://bitchute.com/stefanmolyneux🔴 Minds: http://minds.com/stefanmolyneux🔴 Steemit: http://steemit.com/@stefan.molyneux🔴 Gab: http://gab.ai/stefanmolyneux🔴 Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stefanmolyneux🔴 Facebook: http://facebook.com/stefan.molyneux🔴 Instagram: http://instagram.com/stefanmolyneuxOriginal article: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/temptations-twitter-why-social-media-still-minefield-journalists-n922786
Hope you're doing well. Sorry I didn't post for a couple days.
For those of you who sent in your concerns, I flew down last week to Los Angeles to be there to help launch the new movie, Hoaxed.
It's a documentary on fake news.
I'm in it. It's an amazing, powerful film.
You can go to hoaxedmovie.com for more.
You've got to get your hands on this.
And it's something that is eminently shareable.
It's cross-pollinating across a wide variety of political perspectives, and it's going to be fantastic.
Very... It's groundbreaking, earth-shaking, and, well, it's certainly leveling up the game of culture from the non-leftists.
So, I have a couple of weaknesses, I've got to confess.
One of them is gossip, but that's a topic for another time.
Another one is I find looking at the manipulations of propagandistic language to be endlessly fascinating.
I just love it.
This article is really wild to do with this.
So I'm going to give you a couple of principles that you can look at when you're reading or you think you might be reading propagandistic language, mainstream media in general.
And the first, of course, is to look at agency.
Who is responsible for the problem?
Now, if you're a conservative and you're being written about by the mainstream media, then you are responsible for the problem.
And there's no question about it.
It's not a question of misinterpretation on the part of your audience.
Nobody's making any mistakes.
It's you. You made the mistake.
You're wrong. And agency is pretty.
It's not Twitter's fault. It's not Facebook's fault.
It's not Google's fault. It's not YouTube's fault.
It's your fault that there's a problem, that there's a blow-up.
And the second thing you have to look at is mind reading.
The mind reading is absolutely fascinating.
When you don't have an argument, then what you do is you ascribe motivations to people whose motivations you don't know.
And that's another thing that you'll see.
So let's look at this article called The Temptations of Twitter.
Why social media is still a minefield for journalists.
Now that is fantastic right there.
So first of all, The Temptations of Twitter...
Who has the agency? Well, the problem is, you see, Twitter is the problem.
Twitter is just so tempting.
Like chocolate, you know?
It's not the fault of the guy who eats the chocolate.
It's chocolate is so tempting. We're all subject to temptation.
So it's a way of framing it so that we all feel sympathy.
Well, we're all subject to temptation.
We all make mistakes and all that, right?
Why social media is still a minefield for journalists.
Ah, you see? Now, if you're in a minefield...
Then you're obviously trying to avoid getting your leg blown off.
Obviously, right? You're trying to pick your way through.
But sometimes it's just going to happen.
It's not your fault. In fact, you're trying the exact opposite of getting blown up.
So you're trying not to cause any problems, but it's just a minefield.
You see? It's not what you do.
It's the environment. It's Twitter.
It's a temptation. It's a minefield.
There's no agency on the part of the person actually posting the tweet, and you'll see that quite regularly.
Right. So, another thing is the framing of the person.
Now, if there is a tweet from a conservative that people find problematic, right?
So, Milo Yiannopoulos' joke about the woman in Ghostbusters or Roseanne Barr's joke.
Or comparison or whatever.
Then the first thing you do is you show the quote without context.
And then what you do is you show everyone's horrified reactions.
And this is just a form of programming.
You don't frame it. Or if you do, it's like, well, there was a blow up because this person posted this terrible thing.
Here's this terrible thing. And here's all these negative reactions.
People were shocked. They were appalled.
It's a way of programming you and making sure that you don't come to your own conclusions about things.
But they wire directly into your brain by saying, well, everyone else is offended and upset.
Everyone else thinks that the emperor has clothes on.
So you have to do the same thing.
Otherwise, you're in league with this person and blah, blah, blah, right?
So you have to frame it.
So, you know, whenever people write about me in the mainstream media, they use all these negative adjectives and so on rather than just presenting my arguments.
They have to make sure that you dislike me before you hear anything that I have to say.
And it's a point that Scott Adams makes in the movie Hoax, which I won't get into here because you should really go and watch it.
So how do they start framing this problem?
Politico, editor-in-chief.
So they give you his job description.
Hmm. They give you his job description.
Isn't that nice? They don't frame it.
They don't say far-left.
They don't say Democrat activist.
They don't say Hillary Clinton supporter.
I don't know if he is these things, but they don't give you any framing.
So, in other words, have you ever read an article about me where they start by saying...
Graduate degree in history, host of the largest and most popular philosophy show the world has ever seen, Stefan Molyneux.
They would never do that.
Of course not, because they don't want to give any positive adjectives to people they dislike, but they do want to give these positive descriptions.
So, he's Politico, editor-in-chief.
Right, so... John Harris becomes the most recent high-profile journalist to slip up on Twitter!
He just, oops!
You know, Cat walked across the keyboard.
He accidentally hit the post button.
Slip up on Twitter.
Now, Roseanne Barr lost her entire reboot of the show Roseanne because she posted something that people found objectionable.
And she said, look, I was medicated.
I was like, it was late at night.
I can't remember. But it's like, that's an accident, right?
But no, they mind-read that she consciously wanted to say something terrible to someone, and it was the worst possible interpretation, and it was absolute, right?
But he just slipped up, right?
It's an error. It's oops!
Where there is a temptation to stray from reporting, right?
So right here, at the very beginning, you're being set up perfectly.
It's like, it is a kind of genius, a kind of...
Little finger in the mouth genius, but it is a kind of genius.
So let's go down and have a look at this.
So, they want to defend this guy, obviously.
Oh, oh, sorry, for those of you who are just listening to the audio, there is a picture of the Twitter bird With, you know, one of those fuses, like dynamite, right?
So, again, there's no one typing here.
There's Twitter, and there's just a fuse, and it's going to blow up, and there's no human agency, there's nobody making any choice, there's no choices, there's no picture, there's no tweet, no picture of the tweet, there's no picture of the guy, it's just, you know, hey, Twitter blows up sometimes.
It's weird. So now what they have to do is they have to, if they want to defend this guy, who said something absolutely terrible, in my opinion...
They have to tell you how great he is to begin with.
They have to frame it so that he couldn't possibly have meant what he clearly seems to have meant.
So they start by saying Politico editor-in-chief John Harris has spent nearly three and a half decades in American political journalism building a reputation for himself as a fair and high-minded reporter.
And perhaps more importantly, helping to create a media organization that wields significant influence in Washington while commanding the respect of both Democrats and Republicans.
Woo! That's straight up PR, you understand?
I mean, that's straight up PR. That's not even subtle.
Because, well, you'll see when we get to the post, it's like, how do we know that he's fair and high-minded?
I don't know. I don't know this guy.
I know a little bit about Politico.
But yeah, he's built himself.
He's fair. He's high-minded.
Significant influence commands the respect of both Democrats and Republicans.
Really? I'd like to see some information about that.
I'd like to see some data on that.
I'd like to see some facts, some studies, some statistics, some...
Paul's, you name it. No, just, you know, hey, this guy's great.
He is a living journalism god who walks on water and cannot tell a lie.
All right, cuts down the cherry tree and says, it was I who cut down the cherry tree.
Okay. I could do that voice all day.
I probably shouldn't, though. All right.
So then... He's a great guy.
Maybe he made a mistake or maybe he was just misinterpreted.
So then this has kind of become like a meme, like conservatives pounce!
You know, the conservatives just attack someone.
When the media attacks, they're just expressing just outrage at somebody who's done some heinous thing.
But when conservatives attack, well, they're just pouncing and they're just using it for political advantage and they don't really mean it and they're mind reading and blah, blah, blah.
So then, right, we start off with temptation.
You know, he just slipped up, and then he got attacked.
So then they say, so when Harris became a target of conservative criticism last week, due to a tweet that the Republican National Committee chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, described as an offensive statement and an example of why distrust in the media is at an all-time high, it left a few of his staffers feeling disappointed and perplexed.
Brilliant. Oh, these guys are so good at what they do.
It's obvious when you see it, but I gotta hand it to them, man.
They are good. So, you know, we've got a title.
We've got a subtitle. We've got a graphic.
We've got a first paragraph. We still don't know what the heck this guy said.
There's a reason why we don't know what the heck this guy said.
He just became a target of conservative criticism due to a tweet.
Now, you have to understand why they say That this woman describes it as an offensive statement.
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Rolla McDaniel described as an offensive statement.
Right? So they're saying a Republican, it's conservative criticism, a Republican found it offensive.
They haven't actually given you the tweet.
There's a link here, but they haven't given you the tweet.
So that they discredit the degree of offense because it's coming from conservatives, it's coming from Republicans and so on, right?
So, after he gets criticized because of a possible error, because he succumbed to temptation and was misinterpreted, it left a few of his staffers feeling disappointed and perplexed.
Now that, mmm, that is some tasty manipulation right there.
That is like Iron Rod up the spine, jerky around like Geppetto.
That is amazing.
See, it left a few of his staffers feeling disappointed and perplexed.
And perplexed. It's perplexing.
I don't understand. See, perplexed is wonderful.
Because perplexed is, there's a problem.
If I am genuinely perplexed as to why there's a problem, then you must be insane.
Right? You must be insane.
You know, your wife has an affair on you.
You get mad at her. She's disappointed and perplexed.
I mean, come on.
No factual analysis.
Nothing here. And what they do, of course, is they focus on a few of his staffers.
So they take the public statement of the Republican National Committee chairwoman, but then they talk to the staffers of this guy, this Harris guy.
I feel disappointed and perplexed.
So if there's a problem and you're disappointed, I'm just disappointed that there's a problem.
I'm perplexed that there's a problem, which means there's no problem, but other people are just insane.
It's really well framed this way.
And then the article goes on to say, do we have a tweet yet?
Do we have any objective analysis?
No. Say, some current and former political staffers who spoke on the condition of anonymity so that they could speak freely about their employer expressed confusion and disappointment about Harris's tweet.
About the tweet, about the response, about the reaction.
Confusion and disappointment.
Confusion and disappointment.
So, you know, it wasn't great.
It could have been better. Now, it's still kind of ambivalent, or ambiguous, I suppose.
Are they disappointed about the tweet itself?
Or are they disappointed that it was offensive?
Or are they disappointed and perplexed that the Republicans found it offensive?
I think it's all very murky.
All very murky.
Although I assume because it's a condition of anonymity that...
What's happening is the reporters reached out to these current and former Politico staffers and said, I don't like the tweet, but they spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Well, that's interesting.
Is this guy vengeful if you criticize him?
Why would they not be able to speak freely about their employer?
Why? I mean, former politicals, people who don't even work there anymore, can't say this was a bad tweet.
Why? What does this guy do, this Harris guy, what does he do to people who criticize him?
What kind of culture does he have in his company?
Now, beautiful.
It goes on. So we still don't have the content of the tweet.
It's beautiful. The reporter goes on to say, it also served as a reminder of the perils journalists face on Twitter.
Ah! It's glorious!
It, like, okay, so like, you know, you're hunting in the woods, man, and...
Oh, you're just out walking in the woods, just hiking in the woods.
Forget the hunting. You're just hiking in the woods.
And you just, you face perils.
There are perils. Like there are rattlesnakes, bears, other hunters, or just hunters who don't know where you are, mountain lions, coyotes.
There are perils out there.
It's not your fault. There are just perils out there.
The perils. It's perilous out there.
It's not agency. It's just stuff out there that's dangerous.
The perils journalists face on Twitter.
What are these perils? You type something, guess what?
You're kind of responsible for it.
I mean, Roseanne Barr was.
Alex Jones was.
Milo Yiannopoulos was.
All these people are...
Well, it's not just perils they face on Twitter.
They type something and they're responsible for it.
A reminder of the perils journalists face on Twitter.
Don't you want to sympathize with people who just...
They face perils.
They're peril divers. Okay, so it also served as a reminder of the perils journalists face on Twitter.
Only journalists, you see. Nobody else faces any problems or perils or dangers on Twitter.
When in fact, it's digging through old tweets and getting outraged that journalists kind of do to people that they don't like.
You know what the perils are on Twitter?
Journalists are the perils on Twitter because they're the ones quote mining and taking things out of context and slinging mud and trying to get people fired.
You know the perils that serial killers face from police and their potentially armed victims?
Terrible! Journalists are the peril, but you see, they're victims now.
They just face perils on Twitter out of nowhere.
Sorry. I may be spending too much time on one chunk of one sentence, but it's important!
Okay, it also serves as a reminder of the perils journalists face on Twitter.
Where there is a temptation to stray from reporting and share...
Jokes and opinions. You know, jokes and opinions.
That's all it is. It's just, you know, people getting mad at jokes and opinions.
Now for journalists in the mainstream media to be upset that people are getting mad about jokes and opinions when what gets people banned who are not leftists from mainstream social media sites is usually jokes and opinions.
Ooh. So, they say one errant observation, or a thought improperly worded.
It's just an errant observation.
What does that mean? Is that an observation that doesn't come to heel, that is not well trained, that doesn't roll over when you tickle its belly, that won't get the stick and just runs off and...
It crashes into a train. It's just an errant observation.
It's not something you typed that you're responsible for.
It's an observation that just doesn't return to the base when its shore leave is over.
It's AWOL. It just got loose.
It's out there.
Let's see if we can track it all down together.
It's just an errant observation.
It's not something you're responsible for that you typed.
One errant observation.
Actually, this is even decaf.
One errant observation.
Or a thought improperly worded.
Yeah, it's just improperly worded.
It could have been finessed just a little bit more.
And a journalist can find that they've...
See, journalist is singular and they've is plural, so that's bad anyway.
You need the he, she, right? And a journalist can find that they've inadvertently exposed their own biases to the world and caused a firestorm in the process.
Inadvertently. Oops!
The firestorm in the process.
The firestorm, of course, is outside what they've done, right?
Okay, so now we've had all of this framing.
At some point, they do actually have to get to the tweet, but they can't just give you the tweet, because then you might actually think for yourself and be kind of shocked.
I'm not shocked, but it's a little shocking, if that makes sense.
In Harris's case, it was a tweet on Wednesday that seemed to imply President Donald Trump was a white nationalist.
In response to an NBC News story about a white nationalist who wanted to, quote, take over the GOP, end quote, Harris, this guy tweeted, thought that job had been filled!
Yeah. Yeah, seemed to imply.
Seemed to imply.
Ah, when Roseanne Barr uses a Planet of the Apes reference in regards to some woman...
Who was black? It immediately is core racism because mind reading doesn't seem to imply or could be interpreted as boom!
That's the way that it is.
But who's taken over the GOP? Donald Trump has taken over the GOP. To some degree against the GOP's wishes, right?
So Donald Trump has taken over the GOP. So, in response to an NBC News story about a white nationalist who wanted to take over the GOP, Harris tweeted, thought that job had been filled.
Is that really seeming to imply...
President Donald Trump was a white nationalist.
So for those who don't know, white nationalist is one of these hysterical Nazi terms.
And what it means, obviously, is that you want, this refers to someone who wants a nation composed entirely of white people.
That means all non-whites are deported, rounded up, put in concentration camps.
I mean, it's straight up Nazi stuff, obviously, and it's dictatorial, and it's hideous, and it's brutal, and So it's wrong.
It's hideous. It's a violation of the non-aggression principle.
It's dictatorial. It's totalitarian.
It's all this kinds of stuff, right?
So that is a hideous thing to say about someone.
Now, of course, if you're Louis Farrakhan and you're a black nationalist, that's fine.
You can hang out with Obama and all this kind of stuff.
But if you're a white nationalist, that's just part of the anti-white racism and so on.
But anyway, so it's a hideous thing to say about President Donald Trump.
And so... This guy thinks it's appropriate, let's just say it's a joke, this guy thinks that it's appropriate to joke that Donald Trump is basically a Nazi.
White nationalist means, you know, it's just another code for KKK or Nazi or whatever, right?
So, that's hideous.
And that shows a deep level of bias.
Now, this guy, as you recall, right, who is he?
He's the Politico editor-in-chief.
Editor-in-chief of Politico.
And people are so scared of this guy that they'll only talk about him even if they don't work there anymore.
They'll only express mild disapproval if they're anonymous.
What does it say about this guy's level of vengefulness and...
Going after people.
I mean, this guy is in charge of Politico, and people are scared of him.
What does it say about Politico?
What does it say about its objectivity?
What does it say about the level of criticism that is allowed, or balance, or objectivity that is allowed?
Now, if we go back here, and you remember where they started.
commanding the respect of both Democrats and Republicans.
This guy makes this statement comparing Donald Trump to a white nationalist, But, you know, Republicans just respect his entire organization.
Come on. Come on.
Now, so, a tweet seems to imply President Donald Trump was a white nationalist.
Okay, of course it does, right?
So then they have a challenge, right?
And the challenge is, it's pretty bad.
It's really bad what this guy said.
And it kind of confirms what people talk about in terms of everyone who disagrees with me is a white nationalist, this far-right, extreme-right, a Nazi, you know, this crap that all the diversity addicts, this perspective that they have that everyone who disagrees with them is just plain evil.
And it is, in white nationalism, yeah, it's nasty.
It's... It's totalitarian.
Anyway, so then they finally get round to the content of the tweet, and immediately what they have to do is they try and have to get you to sympathize with this guy.
They've got to get you to sympathize with this guy, otherwise you're going to dwell on the tweet and say, holy crap.
This guy's making a joke about Trump being a white nationalist or seeming to be a white nationalist, and he's in charge of the supposedly bipartisan and respected and blah blah blah, and his former employees are terrified to even mildly criticize anything that, come on, this is like, this is not good.
So then, what you have to do is you have to try and get people to sympathize with this guy, and how do you do that?
Well, you make him a victim, right?
The criticism came quick.
Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer called it a partisan attack.
While GOP operative Arthur Schwartz said Republicans should not take calls from Harris or his reporters until this guy has gone from Politico.
Critiques that also happened within the Twittersphere.
So again, they're only giving criticisms of this guy from Republicans.
And that way, if you're a Democrat or you don't like Republicans, you can say, oh well, you know.
And also the criticism came quick.
It's a reaction. They didn't ask him to clarify it.
You know, of course the reporters don't ask people on the right to clarify or people who are not on the left.
Harris later tweeted that he had been misunderstood and that he only meant to make a quip about NBC's headline.
Sometimes wisecracks get lost in Twitter translation, so appreciate the chance to clarify.
He tweeted, it's just a quip.
Right saying, after you hear that a white nationalist wants to take over the GOP, saying that thought that job had been filled by Trump, It's just a quip.
It's just a little joke.
It's a wisecrack.
That's all it is. And the mainstream media reporters who go over everything that you've ever done online to try and get you on something and then take the worst possible interpretation if one bad interpretation can be made and then expand it and blow it up and come on.
So, crazy. So then the article goes, and it has to go, it has to blur everything, right?
And it has to say, what's interesting is, you know, hey man, this was unwise.
This was, you know, because, hey man, there's people out there are going to just misinterpret stuff, so, you know, you can't even make a joke.
So the article goes on to say, a lot gets lost on Twitter, which makes one wonder why a journalist of Harris's caliber was quipping on Twitter in the first place.
Boom! Right there.
Right there.
So they have to remind you that Harris has high caliber as a journalist and they fully accept, fully accept his statement that he was quipping.
Right? So he says, I just meant to make a quip.
I just, and then the reporter is like, well, yes, he was making a quip.
Right? Because they take his language and they say he was quipping on Twitter in the first place.
So they take his story, his clarification as absolute fact.
It was just a quip. That is amazing.
Which means that if you ever get attacked by a journalist and you say, no, this is what I meant, they should just accept it as true no matter what.
Miley Yiannopoulos was just making a joke.
Roseanne Barr was not trying to say anything racist.
They should just accept that as a fact, but they don't.
Unless it's an anti-Trump quip, in which case...
Or anti-Trump. A vicious statement, in my opinion.
It's just a quip. See?
He was quipping. They've immediately taken his defense and reported it as an actual fact.
The platform, it goes on the article, the platform provides many invaluable services.
It's a news ticker, a chat room, a place to promote work.
It can also provide instant gratification, the chance to come out of attention and follow us, engage with political advocates and build a professional profile.
There are thousands of journalists on Twitter, most of whom tend to stay well within the bounds of professional use.
What does that mean?
Well within the bounds of professional use?
It means they're not making partisan quips, they're not attacking rightists, they're not calling people far right who disagree with them.
They don't say professional ethics, they say within the bounds of professional use.
What does that mean? Does that mean they don't make quips and jokes?
Because you see, they say, this guy, why is he making a quip?
So making a quip is bad.
According to them, right? Because, you know, whatever is bad, right?
Shouldn't do it. So what they've done, you see, they've looked at thousands of journalists, most of whom tend to stay well within the bounds of professional use, which means they've never made a quip or a wisecrack or a joke at anybody else's expense because, you know, that's bad.
So they've reviewed all of this, right?
I don't even know what any of this means, but what it's designed to do is to make you not think that this is common among journalists on Twitter.
They haven't given you any facts or any studies or anything.
They tend to stay well within the bounds of professional use.
What does that mean? It doesn't mean anything.
it's just designed to give you a positive impression so I'm just to give the full response right Thank you.
John F. Harris says, so, sorry, Arthur, let me just zoom in a little here.
So Arthur, whoa, Arthur Schwartz.
So thought that job, so white nationalist leader, Larry Sabato, so white national leader wants to take over the GOP. First of all, he's not going to, so the fact that that's even news is just a way of ginning up the Nazi hysteria these days, right?
You know, as I said on Twitter, there are thousands and thousands of outright Marxists in universities openly indoctrinating young people.
And charging them huge amounts of money for the privilege of doing so, and crushing them under decades worth of debt for useless degrees, while all at the same time saying that capitalists exploit their workers.
There are thousands of outright, openly self-avowed Marxists in American universities indoctrinating the young.
But the real problem, you see, is some crazy white nationalist who wants to take over the GOP, which is never going to happen, and he's a nut bar, but that's what you want to, right?
So Arthur Schwartz said, this from the editor-in-chief and co-founder of Politico.
Until this guy has gone from Politico, no Republican should take calls or help his reporters.
He's not hiding it. This is what he thinks of us.
Despicable. Now, John F. Harris says, a fair point, Arthur Schwartz.
This could be interpreted as a broad swipe rather than a quip about the headline on the NBC piece.
Sometimes wisecracks get lost in Twitter translation, so appreciate the chance to clarify.
No. No, John.
No, no, no, no, no. You don't get to do that.
That's not even remotely fair.
Even by reporter standards, right?
So if you say to a headline, white national leader wants to take over the GOP, say he thought that job had been filled, when Trump took over the GOP, of course you're saying, of course you are.
Come on! It's a broad swine.
A quip about the headline.
Wisecracks get lost in...
Oh, man. Oh, man.
That's terrible. I mean, I really dislike...
This, you insult people horrendously, and then you say, hey man, what, you can't take a joke?
It's just a joke! Oh, that's hideous.
All right. Sorry, let me just zoom out a bit here so we can see.
Okay. So, yes, many journalists tend to stay well within the bounds of professional use, whatever that means, right?
But Twitter's nature makes particular examples of partisan behavior stand out, in turn opening news organizations to accusations of partisan bias.
While that has been true since the social media platform was created more than a decade ago, the vulnerability seems especially acute in this combative and hyper-partisan political climate.
So, first of all, they say it was just a quip, right?
Right up here. Why was he quipping on Twitter?
It's just a quip. He was just quipping on Twitter in the first place.
And then... And then they say that particular examples of partisan behavior stand out.
Well, if it was partisan behavior, then it was insult against Trump by comparing him with a white nationalist, and therefore it wasn't a quip.
You can't have it both ways. Well, here on the left, you went it every which way, but at least.
Opening news organizations to accusations of partisan bias, right?
See, he was absolutely quipping everybody else.
They're just making accusations.
Accusations of partisan bias.
I don't know. Christine Blasey Ford versus Judge Kavanaugh.
Oh no, that's well within the bounds of professional use.
Come on. The vulnerability.
See, he's vulnerable to accusations.
The moral agency is on the part of the people who are making accusations.
They just get this vague impression that this guy is saying something negative about Trump and he's vulnerable to these kinds of criticisms because why?
Because he said something horrendous or implied something horrendous?
No! Because you see this vulnerability seems especially acute in this combative and hyper-partisan political climate.
You know? It's just combative.
It's hyper-partisan.
It's just this weird climate that we all have to operate in, you know, where one guy seems to be comparing Trump to a white nationalist.
It's just... There's just this weird climate out there that we all just kind of have to navigate.
I don't know. You set the minefields, you push people into the minefields and say, hey, we all have to deal with it.
Crazy. Crazy. Back in July, the article goes on, New York Times Magazine writer Emily Bazelon tweeted her opposition to Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination, writing that his appointment would, quote, harm the democratic process and prevent a more equal society.
Three months later, the Times said it had erred in letting her report on Kavanaugh because she was not a newsroom reporter, even though her report was, the Times said, straightforward and fact-based.
All right. So, yeah.
We didn't do anything wrong, but I guess we'll change what we're doing because there are crazy people out there, right?
It's not, the article goes on, it's not just new tweets that are landing journalists in the middle of partisan controversy.
Numerous writers have had to answer for old tweets after taking jobs at media media institutions, leading many journalists to begin deleting their old tweets.
Jim van der Heij, the co-founder and CEO of Axios, who was also a Politico co-founder, recently went so far as to suggest that journalists stop sharing anything on Twitter other than links to published reporting.
He also implied that reporter's social media activity almost always betrayed a left-wing bias.
He said news organizations should ban their reporters from doing anything on social media, especially Twitter, beyond sharing stories.
He said in remarks to students at University of Wisconsin Oshkosh over the weekend, quote, snark jokes and blatant opinion are showing your hand, and it always seems to be the left one.
This makes it impossible to win back the skeptics.
I love this guy.
I love this guy because he's very frank.
He's absolutely, completely, and totally frank.
See, left-wing bias, hysterical, partisan, far-left-wing bias becomes very obvious if you tweet...
On Twitter, so is the solution to have less left-wing bias to strive towards more reasonable levels of objectivity to hire more non-leftist people?
No! You wouldn't want to be doing any of that.
That's crazy talk.
We want to keep our bias.
We just don't want people to know about our bias.
So stop tweeting stuff because it's showing your hand.
Makes it impossible to win back the skeptics.
See, we want to win back the skeptics by pretending we're not hard leftists, by pretending we're not horrendously, collectively Democrat-biased group of hacks, right?
We want to win them back, not by being honest, not by being balanced, not by focusing on objectivity, but by hiding our bias.
So, like the woman, her husband leaves her because she keeps cheating on him, And then she says, you know, I have a solution.
I just have to stop him from finding out that I'm cheating.
Because it's really hard to win him back if he knows that I keep cheating.
So what I need to do is be better at hiding the fact that I'm cheating.
And then I can win him back.
To which point a reasonable person might say, do you want to stop cheating?
Good God! What are you, insane?
I like that he... Ah, van der Heij says that access to social media policy, quote, prohibits the sharing of political views or derogatory snark online.
Don't say anything on the internet that you wouldn't publish under your byline or say on TV. Well, see, that's the problem, is that the bylines of the TV stations are still so hard left.
You know, are you saying that nobody's ever called Trump a racist on TV? So while other news executives aren't as extreme, many are wary of social media's potential to undermine their organization's reputation and credibility.
See? There we are with the agency again.
There we are with the agency again.
Social media, it's social media that undermines it, not their reporters revealing their hysterical bias and anti-conservative attitudes.
It's social media's potential to undermine their organization's reputation and credibility.
In other words, if reporters are honest on social media, it's terrible for the organization's reputation and credibility.
Because then you see people find out...
God help them. People find out exactly how partisan these reporters are.
Boy, you can't have the public knowing that or they'll never trust us.
Oh dear.
Many editors also shave when they see reporters who are expected to be fair and non-partisan fire off a pithy bit of snark or opinion or get mired in a zero-sum debate with their critics.
And the more notable the journalist is, the more leeway they tend to have in sharing their opinions on Twitter without repercussions.
Don't be honest on Twitter.
We look terrible when you tell the truth.
Many newsrooms put policies in place regarding reported social media activity.
They aren't always effective. NBC News guidelines dictate that social media accounts are held to the same news standards, including principles of fairness, accuracy, respect for copyright laws, and privacy rights as any editorial content.
Personal and professional accounts.
Well, see, here's the thing, is that the mainstream media's principle of fairness, accuracy, and respect for blah, blah, blah, I mean, you know, CNN threatened to dox the guy who came up with the WWF Trump-CNN meme, and they go and chase down people all the time and reveal their faces and names.
Fairness and accuracy, I mean, all the hysteria about Lacey Ford and the other women who accused Judge Kavanaugh.
Come on. Several journalists said, journalists shouldn't conceal their true feelings from readers.
I agree with that. Be honest.
James Ponowozik, New York Times television critic, tweeted, this sort of policy says, yes, we have opinions and attitudes and sensibilities like any intelligent person, but we will conceal them from you.
What idiot would believe that?
In what other aspect of journalism do we believe that hiding information from the public serves the public?
We say the latest debate is just part of a larger, long-standing conversation about Twitter's effect on journalism generally.
Columbia Journalism Reviews...
Matthew Ingram recently cited a study that found journalist news judgment was negatively affected by a preoccupation with Twitter.
Hey, remember when they used to go out into the big loo room and meet the flesh people and talk to people and do investigative journalism and take risks?
Now they just swipe and troll.
Some journalists, including the New York Times' Maggie Haberman, have also taken time away from Twitter because of what Haberman described as a general viciousness, toxic partisan anger, and intellectual dishonesty.
Look, it's the mainstream media, which is largely left, that has led this whole hysteria.
The Trump-Russia conspiracy, the there are Nazis in your jam conspiracy, everyone's far right.
I mean, this is not coming from the right.
This is coming from the left. So the idea that, I don't know, you set fire to your house and you say, wow, arsonist!
It's terrible.
Both Van de Heye and Harris are familiar with how severe the repercussions for opinionated tweets can be.
In 2012, when they were running Politico together, the organization suspended and then fired a reporter because of remarks he had made on television and Twitter, including one remark suggesting that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was only comfortable around white people.
Wow.
So, six years ago or so, they fired someone at Politico for a remark suggesting that Mitt Romney was only comfortable around white people, which is far less egregious than implying that somebody is a white nationalist totalitarian.
So that was the standard a mere six years ago.
Not that long ago, really.
So what is the standard now with this guy?
We shall see. Come on.
Everybody knows what the mainstream media is all about.
Just a propaganda arm of the Democrat Party, which now seems to be the manifestation of far-left hard socialism.
So... Look, this is the way things are.
I find it absolutely fascinating, and it is a beautiful thing to see in a nasty kind of way.
Anybody with half a brain knows that you don't start this whole ball of trolling past old tweets and misinterpreting in the most negative kind of ways.
Why? Because it's going to blow back on you.
It's people who have poor impulse control, who are just dumb, low IQ people.
These are the people who start these kinds of battles because this is the whole point.
Once you start attacking people for ambiguous statements, you start taking the worst possible interpretations, you try to get people fired, you try to Separate them from their any kind of reputation.
Of course it's going to come back on you.
Intelligent people don't bring those weapons to social discourse.
They don't bring those attack Terrorist kind of approaches to people's reputations and so on because nobody wants that to be how social discourse is decided.
We want to have reason, evidence, arguments, the best conversationalist, the best reasoner, the best debater.
That's who should carry the field until someone else comes along with better information.
That's how we want things to be decided upon.
We want a fair boxing fight.
We don't want people drugged before they get into the ring.
We don't want the fight to be fixed.
We don't want to slam people's reputations.
We don't want to take somebody's complex arguments, reduce them to the worst possible interpretation, and then just damn them from here and ever.
If you're not that smart, or you are smart but lack impulse control, you won't do that kind of stuff because you can see just over the horizon how it's going to blow back on you.
But that's not the world that we're living in.
That's not the world the left lives in.
It's not the world that they anticipated, but it is the world that they made.
