In an earlier post from Twitchy Tuesday, about PolitiFact whining about the “harassment” of its fact-checkers, Jon Levine wrote something profound: “The genre of ‘journalists who have had their feelings hurt’ really needs to go away.” Twitter really has become some sort of group therapy for journalists, so many of whom think they shouldn’t be criticized because their jobs are just so difficult.
The Washington Post on Tuesday reported on the New York Times’ new editor, Joe Kahn, and Post book critic Carlos Lozada found in the piece what he thought was a profound pull-quote:
Some NYT journalists “don’t even want to engage in certain kinds of stories because they anticipate the reaction that they’ll get from writing on, reporting on, a story that tends to be a lightning-rod type issue on Twitter.” https://t.co/s15vMr8RYq
— Carlos Lozada (@CarlosLozadaWP) June 14, 2022
Maybe journalists shouldn’t spend so much time on social media — back in April, the Times’ former executive editor urged his reporters to “meaningfully reduce” their time on Twitter.
i thought reporters were firefighters
— Ryan (@alwaysonoffense) June 14, 2022
Exactly like brave firefighters running into a building ablaze.
— David In Maryland (@DavidInMaryland) June 14, 2022
Brave firefighters no more
— Need a new team (@Tittlewk93) June 14, 2022
How's the WaPo newsroom these days
— Damin Toell (@damintoell) June 14, 2022
Talk about a lightning-rod type issue on twitter…
— Ryan B. (@rboger12) June 14, 2022
Felicia Sonmez just tweeted herself out of a job.
They're really taking that "all the news that's fit to print" motto to heart.
— Julius Vercingetorix (@didderbops) June 14, 2022
Learn to code
— That Guy (@nopantsdan1) June 14, 2022
React to this ratio
— ⚔️✍🏼 Woke Rasputin 🥃⚔️ 💎 (@RasputinWoke) June 14, 2022
So they aren’t actually journalists, they’re activists. At least you admit as much.
— Brett Daniels (@BrettDanielsBAL) June 14, 2022
Know what would solve this problem, Carlos? If they just stuck to engaging in the *honest* kinds of stories. Try that and see what happens.
— errxn (@errxn) June 14, 2022
Is that a newsroom full of people that needed therapy after Tom Cotton wrote an editorial?
— DubHub 지붕 한국인 🇺🇸🇰🇷 (@TheRealWHub) June 14, 2022
When they all started tweeting in unison, “This op-ed has made my life less safe?”
Then…don't be journalists.
— Sir Farticus 🚶💨 (@Sir_Farticus) June 14, 2022
So you are saying that their Twitter account and their Twitter experience is more important to them than their actual job. NYT could fix it by prohibiting employees using Twitter.
— Crosspatch-ish (@VictorishB123) June 14, 2022
The last executive editor foresaw that it was going to be a problem and asked nicely.
Related:
New York Times reporters urged to ‘meaningfully reduce’ their time on Twitter https://t.co/1McWjBVxOo
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) April 7, 2022
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