USA TODAY last November ran a piece by editor-in-chief Nicole Carroll claiming that journalists carry trauma in their souls. Bruce Shapiro, executive director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, a project of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, came to talk about trauma, burnout, and how to cope. Shapiro told them:
“We are covering events that often breach our personal sense of safety or our personal sense of what’s right in the world and may disrupt our own sense of values.”
And to compound the stress: Journalists are under attack like no other time in American journalism. They’ve spent the past three years covering a pandemic while also dealing with their own or loved ones’ illnesses. The issues they cover for the public – racism, misogyny, LQBTQ attacks – become quite personal. The industry is squeezed by economic pressures and cutbacks.
Boo hoo. As many people have been saying on X, however much you hate journalists, it's not enough. This was back when they were all crying that Elon Musk took their blue checks away.
Here's a press release from the Poynter Institute from April 2022:
The Poynter Institute and George Washington University invite small and medium-sized US-based newsrooms to apply for a pilot program to address and reduce online harassment of journalists. The program, Expert Voices Together, uses evidence-based research to develop a program of best practices for reacting when journalists are threatened, abused or harassed online.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation, and involves a team of researchers, journalists, civil society organizations and technologists dedicated to improving our information ecosystem.
Expert Voices Together is based at George Washington University’s Institute for Data, Democracy & Politics and led by Dr. Rebekah Tromble, a noted expert on digital platform accountability and best practices for combating online harms. Poynter’s PolitiFact editor-in-chief Angie Drobnic Holan is also a member of the core team.
The project’s intent is to create a system for response to online harassment that is grounded in experience and meets the needs of a wide range of journalists. Participating newsrooms will be asked to follow guidance for best practices using their existing staff and management structures, advised by the Expert Voices Together team.
Recommended
Now that you have some background about "Expert Voices Together" and its mission to support journalists being harassed on social media, check out Sen. Ted Cruz going beast mode on this stupid project:
WATCH
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) October 4, 2023
Sen. Ted Cruz blasts the National Science Foundation and their Expert Voices Together project: "Its mission incredibly enough, is to ‘support journalists in moments of crisis while helping the media industry build resilience long term.’ In other words, taxpayer funded… pic.twitter.com/UVgdcdQMxB
WATCH
Sen. Ted Cruz blasts the National Science Foundation and their Expert Voices Together project: "Its mission incredibly enough, is to ‘support journalists in moments of crisis while helping the media industry build resilience long term.’ In other words, taxpayer-funded therapy for left-wing journalists who find actual facts traumatizing. I'm sure people like Taylor Lorenz will be excited about that."
Nobody is better at this stuff than Cruz. Here's where we'd normally insert some commentary from X, but there haven't been any replies. We're posting this anyway because it needs to be seen. We've seen "journalism" as it now exists with our own eyes and don't feel one damn bit of pity for some activist reporter who gets ratioed.
Journalists are so soft.
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