Trump supporters are quoting journalists’ embarrassing social media statements, and the NY Times is furious
“The Times will not be intimidated or silenced”
The call out and cancel cultures, enabled by major media, are out of control. Old tweets, sometimes from teenage years, are dug up and turned into media feeding frenzies.
In December 2018, Robby Soave at Reason reported, Media Attacks Heisman Trophy Winner Kyler Murray for Homophobic Tweets He Sent as a 14-Year-Old:
University of Oklahoma quarterback Kyler Murray won the Heisman Trophy on Saturday. The internet being what it is, some folks on social media apparently took this as an opportunity to go looking for reasons to be outraged, and discovered some homophobic tweets Murray sent when he was in high school.
Murray apologized right away, tweeting, “I used a poor choice of word that doesn’t reflect who I am or what I believe. I did not intend to single out any individual or group.”
For some reason, many media outlets decided this little nontroversy demanded a write-up.
“As of early Sunday morning, four offensive tweets using an anti-gay slur remained active on the Heisman winner’s account,” USA TODAY tweeted, with a link to its article, titled, “Kyler Murray: Heisman winner’s old, homophobic tweets resurfaced.”
MSN, Yahoo News, The Daily Mail, and The New York Post all wrote similar articles, because a 14-year-old boy having unwisely used the word “queer” as a slur is somehow shocking and newsworthy. The Daily Mail even claimed that Murray’s post-Heisman glory was “short-lived” because of the stupid tweets.
Media amplification is critical. And in the age of Trump, old tweets are used to political effect, as this NBC News post shows, How Donald Trump’s Old Tweets Haunt Him Today:
The media has not been immune. When Sarah Jeong was hired for the NY Times Editorial Board, a senior and influential position, her long-string of racists tweets was exposed. Those tweets were not from her teenage years, and were made just a few years ago, making them arguably more relevant given she was joining the Editorial Board of the most influential newspaper in the country.
The NY Times is not happy that journalists are being subjected to such scrutiny by Trump supporters. In fact, the NY Times is furious.
The NY Times reports, Trump Allies Target Journalists Over Coverage Deemed Hostile to White House:
A loose network of conservative operatives allied with the White House is pursuing what they say will be an aggressive operation to discredit news organizations deemed hostile to President Trump by publicizing damaging information about journalists.
It is the latest step in a long-running effort by Mr. Trump and his allies to undercut the influence of legitimate news reporting. Four people familiar with the operation described how it works, asserting that it has compiled dossiers of potentially embarrassing social media posts and other public statements by hundreds of people who work at some of the country’s most prominent news organizations.
The group has already released information about journalists at CNN, The Washington Post and The New York Times — three outlets that have aggressively investigated Mr. Trump — in response to reporting or commentary that the White House’s allies consider unfair to Mr. Trump and his team or harmful to his re-election prospects.
This is standard oppo-research stuff that politicians do against each other, and the media does with vigor. There is no claim that quotes are fabricated:
But the material publicized so far, while in some cases stripped of context or presented in misleading ways, has proved authentic, and much of it has been professionally harmful to its targets.
Who is “behind” it? According to the NY Times, Trump supporters:
It is clear from the cases to date that among the central players in the operation is Arthur Schwartz, a combative 47-year-old conservative consultant who is a friend and informal adviser to Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son. Mr. Schwartz has worked with some of the right’s most aggressive operatives, including the former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon.
“If the @nytimes thinks this settles the matter we can expose a few of their other bigots,” Mr. Schwartz tweeted on Thursday in response to an apologetic tweet from a Times journalist whose anti-Semitic social media posts had just been revealed by the operation. “Lots more where this came from.”
The NY Times is so furious, and so is CNN:
A. G. Sulzberger, the publisher of The Times, said in a statement that such tactics were taking the president’s campaign against a free press to a new level.
“They are seeking to harass and embarrass anyone affiliated with the leading news organizations that are asking tough questions and bringing uncomfortable truths to light,” Mr. Sulzberger said. “The goal of this campaign is clearly to intimidate journalists from doing their job, which includes serving as a check on power and exposing wrongdoing when it occurs. The Times will not be intimidated or silenced.”
In a statement, a CNN spokesman said that when government officials, “and those working on their behalf, threaten and retaliate against reporters as a means of suppression, it’s a clear abandonment of democracy for something very dangerous.”
This is all so absurd. Why should the media be above scrutiny when others — politicians, cultural figures, and particularly anyone right-of-center — are subject to such scrutiny.
https://twitter.com/_David_Edward/status/1165748229981573120
I love & have written for @nytimes but this article & hysterical accompanying statement by the publisher are both totally bananas
OMG a couple of dudes dig up dumb tweets by your young woke staffers & you act like its Pentagon Papers 2.0
Take a Xanax for your TDS next time https://t.co/BHrDTagCfF
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) August 25, 2019
https://twitter.com/ArthurSchwartz/status/1165701342477856772
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Comments
Tweet anything you want. Don’t give the left’s rules any notice. The left has to be anti-language because language is a danger to them, but the right should welcome everything.
A good tweet has to have at least 2 of 6 elements
1. mean
2. bizarre
3. clever
4. naughty
5. familiar situation
6. cute kids or animals
If it doesn’t have that, the tweet wastes everybody’s time.
Same as the rule for jokes via Scott Adams.
Great ideas, but twitter has recently implemented something called reply deboosting. Your replies are hidden etc etc. Another form of censorship. If you use twitter you may want to check this out, https://shadowban.eu/
It is unbelievable, but the vast number of accounts that have this are conservative.
Testing new Reply function.
But… but… but what about the dead “preview” button?
Aw, come on, dude!
Aw, come on, dude!
Very timely Mark Levin comment and President Trump tweet.
Donald J. Trump
Verified account @realDonaldTrump
2d2 days ago
The Media is destroying the Free Press! Mark Levin. So True!
“The Times will not be intimidated or silenced.”
But they will be exposed, and such exposure may well result in reputations being damaged. It is simple, don’t do the crime and their reputations will not suffer.
The ultimate example of this type of slander was witnessed when the press went examining the highschool year book of Kavanaugh. There was no ‘there’ there, but that’s not my point.
A key value of the Judeo-Christian moral view is the idea of the prodigal son or the return to the fold. In the progressive world, there is no return. A video over 10 years old was used to attack Trump during the campaign (the crouch grab video).
For the New York Times or CNN to complain about retaliation is absurd. They should STOP and DESIST doing it themselves. We all change over time.
The press has the mistaken idea that it’s special. And I don’t even know why there is any special press at all. Why do the same damned reporters get to cover the White House press briefings? What value do they add?
We all have keyboards, cell phone cameras and internet connections. The old “press” is no longer needed, and they deserve no special consideration. Just because A G Sulzberger hired some leftist and he didn’t hire me, his reporter is not more special than I am or anyone else is. We can all ask equally good questions and record the answers.
None of the MSM should be classified as news organizations. They are PAC’s as much as any others are and should follow the laws limiting them!
Three Monkeys. The press/media are the three monkeys when it comes to their selves.
Color supremacist. Very diverse. Hutu? Tutsi? Mandela? Mugabe?
Rule #1 if you are conservative. Or say : “Sorry if you were offended …and break out laughing” I mean, isn’t that what Democrats do essentially?
So, the media don’t like living by their own standards. I hear the world’s tiniest violin playing.
“The Times will not be intimidated or silenced.” But if they keep defending the moronic excuses that their reporters, sources etc. give for their vile posts, the Times WILL be embarrassed and lose any shred of influence or claim to impartiality. The is a limit to the tolerance that the intelligent public consumer for the constant stream of anti-Semitic and anti-white sentiments of the Times’ new darlings and their excuses in the nature of “I was young and didn’t realize that it was wrong to believe or say these things.” One, maybe. But individual after individual is too much. And it is compounded by the liberal media’s apologetics for Tlaib and Omar. And by what is emerging in the Times’ feeble current attempt to cast everything in America as about slavery. The pattern that emerges is too clear to ignore.
To many of us, they lost any credibility or respectability a long time ago!
The Old Gray Lady has finally reached senility!
Somehow I’m fresh out of TS chits when it comes to anything with the NYT getting its feelings hurt.
The (leftist) press thinks we are guilty of lese majesty.
“The Times will not be intimidated or silenced.”
And yet the Times is fond of intimidating and silencing those it disapproves of, be they plumbers or forklift operators or schoolkids on a trip to DC.
The Times has not experienced one one-hundredth of the “intimidation” it deserves.
Or we could instead, like, you know, gather in large crowds outside their personal residences and yell obscenities at them. I understand that is a perfectly acceptable way to express one’s dislike for someone else’s political views….
Except that we have jobs…. and other useful activities to spend our time on. Howling mobs are for the lefties who hope socialism will catch on in time to support them….
“The goal of this campaign is clearly to intimidate journalists from doing their job, which includes serving as a check on power and exposing wrongdoing when it occurs.”
And, even better, when it doesn’t occur.
After Baquet’s little talk about how well the Times covered the entirely fictitious “Russian Collusion” story, and his clever plan to pivot to equally imaginary “racism,” it’s just so darling for anybody at the Times to pretend he doesn’t know it’s all about fake news.
They were warned that this was the logical extension of their BS.
When CNN effectively blackmails somebody who made a silly GIF.
When the media searches for and releases the identity of somebody that makes funny memes online.
When they get Kyle Kashuv ‘unaccepted’ from college because of years old tweets when he was a young teenager.
Fuck them. These are the rules they wanted. Now live by them.
Alynski 101
Is the NYT really angry or is this a simple calculation by cold leftists to silence critics? I think they are telling us that they actually respect this more by their enemies. Sociopaths do not respect weak victims.
“Move “ not “more.”
It’s official! The NYT has itself become a snowflake. One can only wonder how much longer before they convert/move their newsroom to the basement of someone’s mother who is willing to supply the hot chocolate as they sit around in their onesies contemplating what stories to run.
The NYT is a propaganda machine. So is CNN and most media. They hide behind the 1st amendment rights as if that makes them above everyone, and no one has the rights they have.
They have been exposed for what they are. They exposed themselves. In this day and age when most employers are researching what people did on social media, given the militant over reach of the right to privacy, why wouldn’t such organizations do this and pass on hiring those who have such hate filled racist comments?
They have no problem looking to destroy other people’s lives with bringing up things from their past, even if it has nothing to do with what makes them newsworthy. That isn’t integrity, it is revenge for some perceived slight or because they don’t like the outcome, so too bad for their victims.
The tweets released are not new, they have been out before, I’ve seen them. The Slimes reaction is typical of leftists, where they think they are above it all, and not subject to the same scrutiny they put others through.
I hope they get the full discrediting, just like they deserve for the way they push the agenda over truth. They hide the truth, and spin things to be something they are not.
It is time to fight back using their tactics against them. They are bullies. They need to be treated as such. They brought this on themselves.
The NY Times needs to bring back Jason Blair, that will fix everything!
Wiki ->
Jayson Thomas Blair (born March 23, 1976) is a former American journalist who worked for The New York Times.He resigned from the newspaper in May 2003 in the wake of the discovery of fabrication and plagiarism in his stories.
“Shut up,” the NYT explained.
Mmm, mmm, mmm… the content of their character.
Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t be journalists.
Who cares what the Ole Communist Gray lady thinks or feelz,they have put themselves in this position.
“It is the latest step in a long-running effort by Mr. Trump and his allies to undercut the influence of legitimate news reporting.”
It does not help to outright lie. The Times does not engage in legitimate news reporting. It makes up the story, or” narrative” that it wants to tell first, and then fits in only such facts or myth that fits.
When I was growing up, I thought J. Jonah Jameson was a caricature. I did not know that hr easy was a personification of real New York Times prejudice.
Bravo Zulu to any/all who are doing the very effective counter punching. I have dementia but other than that, I would join you. Bear down!
Hey, you can’t do ‘dat! Only we get to do ‘dat! You’re breaking da rulez! DX
I’d call the waaaambulance for them, but the waiting list’s a mile long already. That’s socialized medicine for you.
The Internet is forever! **smile**
Keep up the reporting about the scum journalists. Keep/ on at the times as a major target–Take a good look at the Sulzberger father and grandfather and great=grandfather OCHS.Dig
up examples of past false reporting–its cover up of Stalin’s crimes;, etc.
Active social media presence is currently expected of “journalists”. A journalism school listed it among the expectations for its students to maintain an active social media presence. That “profession” now considers it a part of being a journalist. I believe that it’s expected of NYTimes reporters by the company. Social media was mentioned in the meeting transcript that leaked recently, and reporters were told to clean it up.
Since social media is a part of their professional identities, how can they expect us not to look at it when we criticize them as professionals?
NYTimes is now reduced to pathetic murmurings they never would have considered in the old days. Carlos Slim runs a low class rag.
It’s not a campaign against a free press; it’s a campaign against the NYT. Do not confuse the one with the other, Mr. Sulzberger.
David Edwards wins. Call the burn unit.
So, journalists can say whatever they want, but no one else can. Typical.
“The NYT won’t be silenced or intimidated” In their mind that’s a function reserved for them and them only to be used when truth and honesty won’t fit into their narrative!
The honest comment from NYTIMES would be ‘Our reporters are not required to be neutral politically. In face, we encourage them to be liberals. We don’t actually hire centrists or conservatives.’ But hey, honesty isn’t a big thing for ‘opinion writers’ who think they are journalists and work for the NYTimes.
It’s pretty funny how an organization that spent 2-3 years lying about Russian collusion now complains about truthful attacks on their lying reporters.
Sulzberger has, at most, three months (before the primaries start) to salvage his enterprise. His problem is that his staff and his readers will drag themselves and the paper into an abyss from which it’ll never emerge. After the election, no matter who wins, the progressives will move on; they will have no use for a NY Times that either failed to unseat Trump or could hardly claim the lion’s share of credit speaking at this point as it does only to an echo chamber of the faithful. Sulzberger needs to replace Baquet and the entire senior staff with new people who are committed to pure news — no slant, no digging up irrelevant smears, no agenda-driven selection of what to print and what to ignore, no implausible rationalizing (trying to fight the Palin libel suit), no more moral relativism (humanizing terrorists by “balancing” reports of their heinous actions with explanations of explanations of their “grievances”) — and he needs to explain himself in a 6-column large-print statement on p. 1 above the fold. But he will not do it. He is too terrified of the monster that he has helped create.
The media organs of the corporatist globalist Left cannot tolerate their own truth,
“as you reap so shall ye sow.”
The Left unfailingly displays its shallow, fragile brittleness and inhumanity.
I remember getting salesmen, maybe 15 years ago, calling and trying to sell me a subscription to the Sunday NY Times. I’d just laugh and ask them why I should pay for their Leftist propaganda when I can get free news 24/7 on the internet or cable TV, and some without the Marxist slant. They’d hang up very butt hurt.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
social media should be avoided. Anything you say can be dug up, quoted out of context and used against you years later.
It’s been said many times that they can dish it out, but they can’t take it. They claim Trump is using government to go after them. What a lie. Unlike Obama nobody in the FBI,CIA, etc. is tasked with taking out Trump’s enemies. Tough luck NY Times. I never heard you complain about Media Matters which has been doing this for years.
The irony is delicious. Come on, NYT, dig a little harder, keep on trying to defend the indefensible. So far, this course of action is merely a display of self-destruction. Go for it!
Moral of the Story: N E V E R, absolutely NEVER apologize. When will the right remember this ONE important thing when dealing with the lunatic-left?