In the Atlantic this afternoon, Conor Friersdorf addressed the media frenzy over Joy Reid’s past homophobic and transphobic posts:
For 12 days, the media has obsessed over a controversy involving MSNBC host Joy Reid out of all proportion to the story's importance, argues @conor64: https://t.co/yWIr2b95Da
— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) April 30, 2018
Friersdorf writes:
And in my judgment, the scarce time, attention, and resources spent on this matter far exceeded anything that could be plausibly justified as serving the public interest. Neither gays nor lesbians nor the trans community is better off for the exercise of resurfacing of old, forgotten blog posts that even their author now disavows. Probing the dubious hacking story got the public closer to the truth—but a relatively useless truth that is neither pertinent to any of Reid’s actual journalism nor civically useful to the public nor likely to advance the overall cause of greater journalistic honesty or accuracy in any future way that I can see.
Most damning of all are the opportunity costs.
A cable morning-show host’s old blog posts, and her explanations of those posts, no matter how dubious, were just not among the most consequential or important LGBT stories, or media stories, or ideological-bias stories of the last fortnight, let alone the most important national or business or general-interest stories.
Wow. Where to begin?
https://twitter.com/conservadawg/status/991087085271568387
"Probing the dubious hacking story got the public closer to the truth—but a relatively useless truth that is neither pertinent to any of Reid’s actual journalism…"
How is a journalist's truthfulness about their actual writing not pertinent to their journalism?— Glenn Wallace (@GWally3) April 30, 2018
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We’d say it’s pretty pertinent. Particularly when they’re asking us to trust them to be honest.
Laura Ingraham unavailable for comment
— Jen DinNJ (@JenDinnj) April 30, 2018
Honestly you could say the same for @IngrahamAngle
What's different other than the political POV represented; a mistake was made, apologized for, and yet the media continued to vilify them.
This is the social justice world media have created or allowed to be created.
— DabDub Bunchie (@TheBrownTiger) April 30, 2018
Somehow I doubt the Atlantic would be saying this were the name Sean Hannity
— PoliticalNumbness (@polnumbness) April 30, 2018
We gotta get back to Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham https://t.co/Ec4bvF9l0C
— Orange Muppet Energy (@sunnyright) April 30, 2018
It’s Conor so I cut him slack but this is indeed what happens. It’s a lefty so now people will care
— Orange Muppet Energy (@sunnyright) April 30, 2018
Conservatives just don’t merit the same concern.
Atlantic’s irony meter is busted https://t.co/7rExstVk3P
— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) April 30, 2018
Evidently.
https://twitter.com/JohnW39520111/status/991082854733041664
It wasn’t even that long ago.
https://twitter.com/Urbscholar/status/991066286942715912
Williamson’s definitely got Reid beat in the honesty department. But the Atlantic didn’t seem too concerned about the “opportunity costs” associated with his name being dragged through the mud until the Left claimed his scalp.
https://twitter.com/pdkwalk/status/991083096505233408
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