{"id":178917,"date":"2021-02-15T12:00:58","date_gmt":"2021-02-15T12:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=178917"},"modified":"2021-02-08T05:44:36","modified_gmt":"2021-02-08T05:44:36","slug":"the-journalistic-tattletale-and-censorship-industry-suffers-several-well-deserved-blows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/02\/the-journalistic-tattletale-and-censorship-industry-suffers-several-well-deserved-blows\/","title":{"rendered":"The Journalistic Tattletale and Censorship Industry Suffers Several Well-Deserved Blows"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The NYT’s Taylor Lorenz falsely accuses a tech investor of using a slur after spending months trying to infiltrate and monitor a new app that allows free conversation.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

New York Times reporter Taylor Lorenz and Silicon Valley investor Marc Andreessen<\/p><\/div>\n

7 Feb 2021 – <\/em>A new and rapidly growing<\/strong> journalistic \u201cbeat\u201d has arisen over the last several years that can best be described as an unholy mix of junior high hall-monitor tattling and Stasi-like citizen surveillance. It is half adolescent and half malevolent. Its primary objectives are control, censorship, and the destruction of reputations for fun and power. Though its epicenter is the largest corporate media outlets, it is the very antithesis of journalism.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve written before<\/a> about one particularly toxic strain of this authoritarian \u201creporting.\u201d Teams of journalists at three of the most influential corporate media outlets \u2014 CNN<\/em>\u2019s \u201cmedia reporters\u201d (Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy), NBC<\/em>\u2019s \u201cdisinformation space unit\u201d (Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny), and the tech reporters of The New York Times<\/em> (Mike Isaac, Kevin Roose, Sheera Frenkel) \u2014 devote the bulk of their \u201cjournalism\u201d to searching for online spaces where they believe speech and conduct rules are being violated, flagging them, and then pleading that punitive action be taken (banning, censorship, content regulation, after-school detention). These hall-monitor reporters are a major factor explaining why tech monopolies, which (for reasons of self-interest and ideology) never wanted the responsibility to censor, now do so with abandon and seemingly arbitrary blunt force: they are shamed by the world\u2019s loudest media companies when they do not.<\/p>\n

Just as the NSA is obsessed with ensuring there be no place on earth<\/a> where humans can communicate free of their spying eyes and ears, these journalistic hall monitors cannot abide the idea that there can be any place on the internet where people are free to speak in ways they do not approve. Like some creepy informant for a state security apparatus, they spend their days trolling the depths of chat rooms and 4Chan bulletin boards and sub-Reddit threads and private communications apps to find anyone \u2014 influential or obscure \u2014 who is saying something they believe should be forbidden, and then use the corporate megaphones they did not build and could not have built but have been handed in order to silence and destroy anyone who dissents from the orthodoxies of their corporate managers or challenges their information hegemony.<\/p>\n

Oliver Darcy has built his CNN career by sitting around with Brian Stelter petulantly pointing<\/a> to people breaking the rules on social media and demanding tech executives make the rule-breakers disappear. The little crew of tattletale millennials assembled by NBC \u2014 who refer to their twerpy work with the self-glorifying title of \u201cworking in the disinformation space\u201d: as intrepid and hazardous as exposing corruption by repressive regimes or reporting from war zones \u2014 spend their dreary days scrolling through 4Chan boards to expose the offensive memes and bad words used by transgressive adolescents; they then pat themselves on the back for confronting dangerous power centers, even when it is nothing more trivial and bullying than doxxing the identities of powerless, obscure citizens<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

But the worst of this triumvirate is the NYT\u2019s <\/em>tech reporters, due to influence and reach if no other reason. When Silicon Valley monopolies, publicly pressured<\/a> by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and other lawmakers, united to remove Parler from the internet<\/a><\/em>, the Times\u2019 tech team quickly donned their hall-monitor goggles and Stasi notebooks to warn that the Bad People had migrated to Signal and Telegram<\/a>. This week they asked:<\/a> \u201cAre Private Messaging Apps the Next Misinformation Hot Spot?\u201d One reporter \u201cconfess[ed] that I am worried about Telegram. Other than private messaging, people love to use Telegram for group chats \u2014 up to 200,000 people can meet inside a Telegram chat room. That seems problematic.\u201d<\/p>\n

These examples of journalism being abused to demand censorship of spaces they cannot control are too numerous to comprehensively chronicle. And they are not confined to those three outlets. That far more robust censorship is urgently needed is now a virtual consensus in mainstream corporate journalism: it\u2019s an animating cause for them.<\/p>\n

“Those of us in journalism have to come to terms with the fact that free speech, a principle that we hold sacred, is being weaponized against the principles of journalism,” complained<\/a> Ultimate Establishment Journalism Maven Steve Coll<\/a>, the Dean of Columbia University\u2019s Graduate School of Journalism and a Staff Writer at The New Yorker<\/em>. A New Yorker<\/em> and Vox<\/em> contributor who runs a major journalistic listserv appropriately called \u201cStudy Hall,\u201d Kyle Chayka, has already begun shaming Substack<\/a> for hosting writers he regards as unacceptable (Jesse Singal, Andrew Sullivan, Bari Weiss). A recent Guardian<\/em> article warned<\/a> that podcasts was one remaining area still insufficiently policed. ProPublica<\/em> on Sunday did the same<\/a> about Apple, and last month one of its reporters appeared on MSNBC<\/a> to demand that Apple censor its podcast content as aggressively as Google\u2019s YouTube now censors its video content.<\/p>\n

Thus do we have the unimaginably warped dynamic in which U.S. journalists are not the defenders of free speech values but the primary crusaders to destroy them. They do it in part for power: to ensure nobody but they can control the flow of information. They do it partly for ideology and out of hubris: the belief that their worldview is so indisputably right that all dissent is inherently dangerous \u201cdisinformation.\u201d And they do it from petty vindictiveness: they clearly get aroused \u2014 find otherwise-elusive purpose \u2014 by destroying people\u2019s reputations and lives, no matter how powerless. Whatever the motive, corporate media employees whose company title is \u201cjournalist\u201d are the primary activists against a free and open internet and the core values of free thought.<\/p>\n

The profound pathologies<\/strong> driving all of this were on full display on Saturday night as the result of a reckless and self-humiliating smear campaign by one of The New York Times\u2019 <\/em>star tech reporters, Taylor Lorenz. She falsely and very publicly accused Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor Marc Andreessen of having used the \u201cslur\u201d word \u201cretarded\u201d during a discussion about the Reddit\/GameStop uprising.<\/p>\n

Lorenz lied. Andreessen never used that word. And rather than apologize and retract it, she justified her mistake by claiming it was a \u201cmale voice\u201d that sounded like his, then locked her Twitter account as though she<\/em> \u2014 rather than the person she falsely maligned \u2014 was the victim.<\/p>\n

But the details of what happened are revealing. The discussion which Lorenz falsely described took place on a relatively new audio app called \u201cClubhouse,\u201d an invitation-only platform intended to allow for private, free-ranging group conversations. It has become popular among Silicon Valley executives and various media personalities (I was invited onto the app a few months ago but never attended or participated in any discussions). But as CNBC<\/em> noted<\/a> this week, \u201cas the app has grown, people of more diverse backgrounds have begun to join,\u201d and it \u201chas carved out a niche among Black users, who have innovated new ways for using it.\u201d Its free-speech ethos has also made it increasingly popular<\/a> in China as a means of avoiding repressive online constraints.<\/p>\n

These private chats have often been infiltrated by journalists, sometimes by invitation and other times by deceit. These journalists attempt to monitor the discussions and then publish summaries. Often, the \u201creporting\u201d consists of out-of-context statements designed to make the participants look bigoted<\/a>, insensitive<\/a>, or otherwise guilty of bad behavior<\/a>. In other words, journalists, desperate for content, have flagged Clubhouse as a new frontier for their slimy work as voluntary hall monitors and speech police.<\/p>\n

Fulfilling her ignoble duties there, Lorenz announced on Twitter that Andreessen had said a bad word. During the discussion of the \u201cReddit Revolution,\u201d she claimed, he used the word \u201cretarded.\u201d She then upped her tattling game by not only including this allegation but also the names and photos of those who were in the room at the time \u2014 thus exposing those who were guilty of the crime of failing to object to Andreessen\u2019s Bad Word:<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Numerous Clubhouse participants, including Kmele Foster, immediately documented<\/a> that Lorenz had lied. The moderator of the discussion, Nait Jones, said<\/a> that \u201cMarc never used that word.\u201d What actually happened was that Felicia Horowitz, a different participant in the discussion, had \u201cexplained that the Redditors call themselves \u2018retard revolution\u2019\u201d and that was the only mention of that word.<\/p>\n

Rather than apologizing and retracting<\/a>, Lorenz thanked Jones for \u201cclarifying,\u201d and then emphasized how hurtful it is to use that word. She deleted the original tweet without comment, and then \u2014 with the smear fully realized \u2014 locked her account.<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Besides the fact that a New York Times<\/em> reporter recklessly tried to destroy someone\u2019s reputation, what is wrong with this episode? Everything<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The participants in Clubhouse have tried to block these tattletale reporters from eavesdropping on their private conversations precisely because they see themselves as Stasi agents whose function is to report people for expressing prohibited ideas even in private conservations. As Jones pointedly noted, \u201cthis is why people block\u201d journalists: \u201cbecause of this horseshit dishonesty.\u201d<\/p>\n

One reporter, Jessica Lessin, recently complained<\/a> she was blocked by Andreessen from his Clubhouse discussions \u2014 as if she has the divine right to monitor people\u2019s communications. And Lorenz herself has been obsessed with monitoring<\/a> Clubhouse discussions in general and Andreessen in particular for months, mocking him just last week when she obtained a fake credential to enter:<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Just take a second to ponder how infantile and despotic, in equal parts, all of this is. This NYT <\/em>reporter used her platform to virtually jump out of her desk to run to the teacher and exclaim: he used the r word!<\/em> This is what she tried for months to accomplish: to catch people in private communications using words that are prohibited or ideas that are banned to tell on them to the public. That she got it all wrong is arguably the least humiliating and pathetic aspect of all of this.<\/p>\n

Beyond all this, what if he had<\/em> used the word \u201cretarded\u201d? What would it mean? If someone uses that term maliciously, as a slur against others to mock their intellect, it is certainly reasonable to condemn that. Used with that intent and in that context, it is unnecessarily hurtful for people who suffer diseases of cognitive impairment.<\/p>\n

But that is not remotely what happened here. Anyone who spent any time at all on the sub-Reddit thread of r\/WallStreetBets knows that \u201cretards\u201d was the single most common term used by those who short-squeezed the hedge funds invested in the collapse of GameStop. It is virtually impossible to discuss the ethos of that subculture without using that term. This<\/a> was one of their most popular battlecries:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can stay retarded longer than you can stay solvent.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And the use of that term in the sub-Reddit was not just ubiquitous but fascinating: layered with multiple levels of irony and self-deprecation. Sociologists could, and should, study how that term was deployed by those Redditors and what role it played in forming the community that enabled them to strike a blow against these hedge funds. It reflected their self-perceived place at the bottom of social hierarchies, expressed the irony that they as unsophisticated investors were defeating self-perceived financial wizards, and marked their culture and community as transgressive. Did some use it with malice? Maybe. But there was vast complexity to it.<\/p>\n

To declare any discussion of that term off-limits \u2014 as Lorenz tried to do \u2014 is deeply anti-intellectual. To pretend that there is no difference in the use of that term by the Redditors and its discussion in Clubhouse on the one hand, and its malicious deployment as an insult to the cognitively disabled on the other, is dishonest in the extreme. To publicly tattle on adults who utter the term without any minimal attempt to understand or convey context and intent is malicious, disgusting and sociopathic.<\/p>\n

But this is now <\/strong>the prevailing ethos in corporate journalism. They have insufficient talent or skill, and even less desire, to take on real power centers: the military-industrial complex, the CIA and FBI, the clandestine security state, Wall Street, Silicon Valley monopolies, the corrupted and lying corporate media outlets they serve. So settling on this penny-ante, trivial bullshit \u2014 tattling, hall monitoring, speech policing: all in the most anti-intellectual, adolescent and primitive ways \u2014 is all they have. It\u2019s all they are. It\u2019s why they have fully earned the contempt and distrust in which the public holds them.<\/p>\n

The same stunted mentality just resulted in the destruction of the career and reputation of Lorenz\u2019s far more accomplished colleague, science reporter Donald McNeil. On a 2019 field trip for rich high school kids<\/a> to Peru, he used the \u201cn-word\u201d after a student asked him whether he thought it was fair that one of her classmates was punished for having used it in a video. McNeil used it not with malice or as a racist insult but to inquire about the facts of the video so he could answer the student\u2019s question.<\/p>\n

After New York Times<\/em> senior editors \u2014 including African-American editor-in-chief Dean Baquet \u2014 investigated and concluded that \u201conly\u201d a reprimand was appropriate \u2014 \u201cit did not appear to me that his intentions were hateful or malicious,\u201d said Baquet \u2014 dozens of McNeil\u2019s colleagues wrote a furious letter<\/a> demanding far more severe punishment. \u201cOur community is outraged and in pain,\u201d said the 150 Times employee-signatories, adding: \u201cintent is irrelevant.\u201d Intent is irrelevant<\/em> when judging how harshly to punish this storied journalist for uttering this word.<\/p>\n

They got what they wanted. McNeil wrote a grovelling, abject apology<\/a>, and then the Times<\/em> announced he was gone from his job<\/a> after forty-five years with the paper, including for COVID reporting over the last year that the paper had submitted for a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Just think about that: New York Times<\/em> employees, who are unionized, demanded that management punish a fellow union member more harshly<\/em> than management wanted to. In 2002, McNeil won the 1st place prize<\/a> from the National Association of Black Journalists for excellence in his reporting on how the AIDS crisis was affecting Africa. Now his forty-five-year career and reputation are destroyed \u2014 at the hands of his own colleagues \u2014 because \u201cintent is irrelevant\u201d when using off-limit words.<\/p>\n

The overarching rule of liberal media circles and liberal politics is that you are free to accuse anyone who deviates from liberal orthodoxy of any kind of bigotry that casually crosses your mind \u2014 just smear them as a racist, misogynist, homophobe, transphobe, etc. without the slightest need for evidence \u2014 and it will be regarded as completely acceptable. That is the rubric under which the most famous lawyer of the ACLU, an organization once devoted to rigid precepts of due process, decided on Saturday to brand two of his ideological opponents as \u201cclosely aligned with white supremacists.\u201d Fresh off being named<\/a> by Time<\/em> Magazine as one of the planet\u2019s 100 most influential human beings \u2014 this is someone with a great deal of power and influence \u2014 trans activist and ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio decided to spew<\/a> this extremely grave accusation about J.K. Rowling and Abigail Shrier, both of whom oppose the inclusion of trans girls in female sports:<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

As I\u2019ve written before<\/a>, I\u2019m not in agreement with those who advocate this absolute ban. I\u2019m open to a scientific consensus that develops hormonal and other medicinal protocols for how trans girls and women can fairly compete with CIS women in sporting competitions. But that does not entitle you \u2014 especially as an ACLU lawyer \u2014 to just go around casually branding people as \u201cclosely aligned to white supremacists\u201d who have never remotely demonstrated any such affinity, just because you feel like it, because you crave the power to destroy your adversaries, or are too slothful to engage their actual views.<\/p>\n

But this is absolutely acceptable behavior in mainstream and liberal circles. I just spent the week being widely branded by these kinds of people as a \u201cmisogynist\u201d \u2014 someone who hates women<\/em> \u2014 because I criticized and mocked Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez for her scornful rejection of the offer from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to work with her to investigate Robinhood\u2019s conduct in the GameStop affair. I particularly critiqued her ludicrous accusation<\/a> to Cruz that \u201cyou almost had me murdered\u201d \u2014 a claim that even CNN\u2019s \u201cfact-checker\u201d Daniel Dale, who would rather poke out his own eyes than conclude that a popular Democrat has lied \u2014 said was<\/a> without evidence because \u201cCruz did not advocate violence against Ocasio-Cortez, much less call for her murder.\u201d<\/p>\n

AOC is a popular and powerful politician, and journalists are allowed to criticize and mock such people. It\u2019s our job. Yet for doing mine, I was casually and widely cast as a sexist hater of women (ironically, an old homophobic trope long deployed against gay men) by the likes of Ashley Reese<\/a> (\u201cjust baldly misogynistic\u201d) of Jezebel<\/em> (which really ought to just change its name to You\u2019re a Misogynist<\/em>, since it has no other content) and long-time Media Matters and David Brock smear artist Eric Boelhert<\/a> (\u201cGreenwald\u2019s hatred of women knows no bounds\u201d).<\/p>\n

That I was one of AOC\u2019s first and most active supporters<\/a> back in 2018 when she ran against incumbent Joe Crowley \u2014 when people like Reese and Boelhert had not even heard of her \u2014 and that I have defended her more times than I can count, while also criticizing her on occasion, obviously goes unmentioned and does not matter (for those asking why I supported her, I interviewed AOC<\/a> during her primary run and she gave impressive answers now unrecognizable from her politics). My support of AOC in 2018 was simultaneous with my misogynistic support<\/a> for Cynthia Nixon for New York Governor and Zephyr Teachout for Attorney General. Was my misogyny hidden then, or did it just recently develop? There\u2019s no reason to interrogate any of this. It does not deserve that. There\u2019s zero rationality let alone evidence to this tactic. It\u2019s just driven by spite and stupidity and vindictiveness.<\/p>\n

I can ignore these kinds of accusatory smears, or scorn and ridicule them and their practitioners \u2014 and I do \u2014 because they have no power over me. But consider how many people in journalism or other professions whose positions are less secure are rightly terrorized by these lowlife tactics, intimidated into silence and conformity. They know if they express views these Stasi agents and their bosses dislike, their reputations can be instantly destroyed. So they remain silent or pliant out of necessity.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the purpose, the function, of these lowly accusatory tactics: to control, to coerce, to dominate, to repress. The people who engage in these character-assassinating, censorship-fostering games \u2014 especially those who call themselves \u201cjournalists\u201d \u2014 deserve nothing but intense scorn. And those who are free from their influence and power have a particular obligation to heap it on them. Aside from being what it deserves, that scorn is the only way to neutralize this tactic.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Glenn Greenwald\u00a0is\u00a0one of three co-founding editors of <\/em>The Intercept. He is a journalist, constitutional lawyer, and author of four <\/em>New York Times best-selling books on politics and law. His most recent book, <\/em>\u201cNo Place to Hide,\u201d is about the U.S. surveillance state and his experiences reporting on the Snowden documents around the world. Prior to co-founding <\/em>The Intercept, Glenn\u2019s column was featured in the\u00a0<\/em>Guardian\u00a0and<\/em> Salon. He was the debut winner, along with Amy Goodman, of the Park Center I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism in 2008, and also received the 2010 Online Journalism Award for his investigative work on the abusive detention conditions of Chelsea Manning. For his 2013 NSA reporting, he received the George Polk Award for National Security Reporting; the Gannett Foundation Award for investigative journalism and the Gannett Foundation Watchdog Journalism Award; the Esso Premio for Excellence in Investigative Reporting in Brazil (he was the first non-Brazilian to win), and the Electronic Frontier Foundation\u2019s Pioneer Award. Along with Laura Poitras, <\/em>Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the top 100 Global Thinkers for 2013. The NSA reporting he led for the <\/em>Guardian\u00a0was awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for public service. Glenn is an animal fanatic & founder of HOPE Shelter.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 greenwald.substack.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

7 Feb 2021 – A new and rapidly growing journalistic \u201cbeat\u201d has arisen over the last several years that can best be described as an unholy mix of junior high hall-monitor tattling and Stasi-like citizen surveillance. It is half adolescent and half malevolent. Its primary objectives are control, censorship, and the destruction of reputations for fun and power.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":176739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[1785,2314,378,1855,234,1109,2110],"class_list":["post-178917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","tag-censorship","tag-corporate-media","tag-journalism","tag-mainstream-media-msm","tag-media","tag-spying","tag-yellow-journalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}