KYLE SMITH: From Watergate to whinegate: The Washington Post is a hot mess.

The Washington Post, June 1972: Two dogged reporters patiently dig into the details of a strange burglary at Democratic Party headquarters, diligently assemble facts, cultivate sources and put together a package of revelations that will lead to the first presidential resignation in history.

The Washington Post, exactly half a century later: Two Mean Girl basket cases spend an entire weekend crazily lurching around spitting inane accusations at their colleagues for microaggressing them. The more people laugh, the louder they cry, “I’m being endangered!”

How institutions change. The 145-year-old paper was once personified by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein: “Woodstein.” This weekend the WaPo’s reputation was effectively redefined by MezRenz: Felicia Sonmez and Taylor Lorenz, each of whom brought shame on the paper over nothing.

The proximate cause of this spastic overreaction was a joke, retweeted by WaPo reporter Dave Weigel, that suggested all women are either bisexual or bipolar. This kind of “Bitches be craaaaazy!” joke died out in the ’80s, and Weigel shouldn’t have retweeted it, but Sonmez clearly was trying to get Weigel fired or severely punished when she re-tweeted Weigel’s retweet with a sarcastic note that it was “Fantastic to work at a news outlet where retweets like this are allowed!” Weigel was already being corrected internally, so there was no need to take this public on Twitter, and he shortly deleted and apologized. That should have been the end of it.

And the hits just keep on coming! The Washington Post suspends reporter David Weigel over sexist retweet.

As Saagar Enjeti tweets, “Just so we’re all clear: Taylor Lorenz can literally lie and violate basic standards and gets no punishment. Felicia can leak her bosses emails, violate company policy and harass her coworkers and is good to go. Dave Weigel shitposts and he’s suspended w/o pay for a month.”

LAYERS OF EDITORS AND ASS-COVERERS: Washington Post issues two corrections after stealth-edit scrubbed false claim from Taylor Lorenz report.

The Post later followed with an even lengthier correction, this time at the top of Lorenz’s article that read, “The first published version of this story stated incorrectly that Internet influencers Alyte Mazeika and ThatUmbrellaGuy had been contacted for comment before publication. In fact, only Mazeika was asked, via Instagram. After the story was published, The Post continued to seek comment from Mazeika via social media and queried ThatUmbrellaGuy for the first time. During that process, The Post removed the incorrect statement from the story but did not note its removal, a violation of our corrections policy. The story has been updated to note that Mazeika declined to comment for this story and ThatUmbrellaGuy could not be reached for comment. A previous version of this story also inaccurately attributed a quote to Adam Waldman, a lawyer for Johnny Depp. The quote described how he contacted some Internet influencers and has been removed.”

Late on Friday, the Post quietly changed “correction” to “editor’s note” while maintaining the text of the errors.

Neither correction, however, addressed who was behind the stealth edit.

When asked specifically whether Lorenz herself or an editor made the stealth edit, a spokesperson for the Post replied, “That’s not something we’d discuss on the record.”

For obvious reasons.

THE STRUGGLE (SESSION) IS REAL: Washington Post reporters continue airing their grievances with one another on Twitter.

Washington Post reporter Felicia Sonmez continued to complain about her colleagues on Sunday morning after a retweet engulfed the newsroom in controversy on Friday.

Sonmez shared screenshots from what she described as public attacks against her by fellow Washington Post reporter Jose A. Del Real.

“When women stand up for themselves, some people respond with even more vitriol. Last night, a Post colleague publicly attacked me for calling out another colleague’s sexist tweet. He first hid any replies objecting to his attacks, and now seems to have deleted his account,” Sonmez tweeted.

Sonmez was referring to Del Real’s tweet, where he criticized her for airing her grievances with colleagues in public.

“Felicia, we all mess up from time to time. Engaging in repeated and targeted public harassment of a colleague is neither a good look nor is it particularly effective. It turns the language of inclusivity into clout chasing and bullying. I don’t think this is appropriate,” Del Real tweeted.

The turmoil at the Washington Post began when reporter David Weigel retweeted a joke that mocked women

“Fantastic to work at a news outlet where retweets like this are allowed!” Sonmez reacted.

Del Real has upped the victimhood stakes, however:

Glennwald’s whole thread on what he calls the “Weekend drama at Robin D’Angelo Junior High“ is well worth a read.

As the struggle session plays out: WashPost Caught Stealth Editing Taylor Lorenz Lies About Comment Requests.

WAPO: WE ARE ALL SOCIALISTS NOW — Complete with Maoist Struggle Sessions: Washington Post spirals out of control after a writer retweets a ‘reprehensible’ joke about women.

A spokesperson for the Washington Post issued an apology after a writer retweeted a sexist joke and other writers at the news outlet objected vocally on Twitter.

Dave Weigel retweeted a joke about women on Friday and immediately regretted it after he was criticized heavily for joking on Twitter.

Weigel deleted the tweet, but it was saved for posterity by random people on Twitter and other writers at the outlet, like Felicia Sonmez, who objected to the sexist message.

“Every girl is bi. You just have to figure out if it’s polar or sexual,” read the tweet.

“Fantastic to work at a news outlet where retweets like this are allowed!” replied Sonmez sarcastically.

“Or perhaps @daveweigel the correct diagnosis: they’re just not that into you,” responded Stephanie Ruhl, the MSNBC host.

Kristine Coratti Kelly, a Wapo spokesperson, quickly issued an apology for the offensive joke tweet.

“Editors have made clear to the staff that the tweet was reprehensible and demeaning language or actions like that will not be tolerated,” said Kelly.

Live look at the Post’s inter-office discussions:

Also at the Post today: The Washington Post and Taylor Lorenz Lie to Smear (and Maybe Deplatform) Law YouTubers Who Got the Amber Heard Defamation Story Right.

(Classical reference in headline.)

ANN ALTHOUSE ON THE DISINFORMATION OFFICE’S FAILURE: Ha ha ha. “Let right-wing attacks derail” — that’s rich. The idea was so bad, they couldn’t defend it. Let derail. Ha. Like it was a train, locomoting powerfully down the track…. No, it wasn’t. It never had any traction. It went kablooey only because everyone didn’t lay down and let it go by entirely unimpeded.

Plus: “I think they didn’t fight because they saw they’d only be digging a bigger hole for themselves. It is ironic, but that makes it funny. And it’s a great thing to be in a position to laugh at what happened.”

Plus from the comments: “My God. It’s impossible to measure just how far WaPo has fallen. But let Taylor Lorenz try to measure it out for us- column by column. A big assist to the Idiots in the White House. Never have so many spent so much time putting their heads together and still coming up short of one full brain. The entire act is beyond embarrassing. They’re dangerous to the nation. “

NINA JANKOWICZ’S FAULTY RECORD, NOT HER CRITICS, DOOMED THE DISINFORMATION BOARD: And The Washington Post’s wildly one-sided account of Jankowicz’s fall was an exercise in government PR.

It’s unclear whether plans for the board will be un-paused in the future; Jankowicz had initially decided to resign, reconsidered when she was told the pause might be temporary, and then ultimately left anyway.

This news comes from an exclusive report by The Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz, whose scoop is buried underneath layers of pro-government verbiage. Lorenz’s story excessively flatters Jankowicz—she is glamorized as “well-known” in the field, having “extensive experience,” and “well-regarded” in just the first two paragraphs—while ignoring legitimate criticism of this so-called expert’s track record. Indeed, there is zero mention, none whatsoever, of the fact that Jankowicz was flagrantly wrong about the pivotal “disinformation” episode of the 2020 election cycle: the Hunter Biden laptop story.

For WaPo, the story is not that DHS shuttered the Disinformation Governance Board—the real story is that right-wing “coordinated online attacks” achieved this outcome after subjecting Jankowicz to an “unrelenting barrage of harassment.”

“Within hours of news of her appointment, Jankowicz was thrust into the spotlight by the very forces she dedicated her career to combating,” writes Lorenz.

She concedes that the board’s name was “ominous” and details about its specific mission were “scant.” But most of the article focuses on the tenor of the criticism of Jankowicz.

Lorenz just keeps knocking it out the park — are there any editors at the Washington Post?

UPDATE: Jim Geraghty asks, “Since When Does the Biden Team Quit in the Face of Conservative Criticism?”, and writes that “A better editor would have looked at Taylor Lorenz’s story this morning, contending that the Department of Homeland Security shut down the Disinformation Governance Board because of intense criticism from ‘the right-wing Internet apparatus,’ and told the reporter, ‘No, that’s not the story. Keep digging until you find an explanation that makes sense, checks out, and is less self-serving to those involved’…The Washington Post, which prides itself on its in-depth and detailed coverage of how the federal government really works, should be embarrassed to have published this spectacularly implausible effort at spin.”

OLD AND BUSTED: In The Future, Everyone Will Be Famous For 15 Minutes.

The New Hotness? In The Future, Everyone Will Be Winston Smith For 15 Minutes: Biden Administration Considers Shutting Down Disinformation Board amid Blistering Criticism: Report.

“Nina Jankowicz has been subjected to unjustified and vile personal attacks and physical threats,” a DHS spokesperson told the [Washington] Post in a statement. “In congressional hearings and in media interviews, the Secretary has repeatedly defended her as eminently qualified and underscored the importance of the Department’s disinformation work, and he will continue to do so.”

And speaking of Orwellian, look who the Post assigned the story to: Taylor Lorenz blames ‘coordinated right-wing attacks’ after Biden’s Ministry of Truth reportedly hits the pause button. “The vast right-wing conspiracy is back, baby!”

Related: Biden’s new ‘misinformation czar’ is a Hunter laptop denier.

FEAR AND LOATHING AT THE BEZOS POST: WaPo Pens Tribute to Man It Would’ve Blacklisted — Hunter S. Thompson.

But the troubling side of Thompson is something the Post had to leave out of its own write-up. To tell the full truth about Thompson would, in the eyes of the Post’s intolerant subscribers, negate everything positive written about him. If the Post included Thompson’s warts, the left-wing outlet would be attacked by its own readers for daring to say anything positive about such a brute. What’s more, the closing paragraphs of the Post piece would be exposed for what it is — laughable:

Perhaps even more mind-boggling: Thompson’s initial note to [Washington Post publisher Philip] Graham is a case study in calumny. “He’s clearly angling for a job covering Latin America, and he does it not only by criticizing the Newsweek’s coverage, calling it an ‘abomination’ and a ‘fraud,’ but Graham himself, and personally, calling him a ‘phony’ who’s ‘overpaid.’”

[…]

Had Graham lived, might Thompson have ended up toiling at The Post? Unlikely, says Richardson. “He lost every job he ever managed to land.”

Good heavens, is today’s Washington Post — one of the media’s primary enforcers of Woke Nazism — actually suggesting that a man who hurled racial slurs and who stands accused of domestic abuse, misogyny, and inappropriate workplace behavior, would have been appropriate Washington Post material?

What a joke.

If Thompson didn’t hate Richard Nixon and oppose objectivity in journalism, the Post would have savaged him, not gushed all over him.

Hunter S. Thompson was a fantastic writer, but not for very long. Due to his addictions, which fueled his endless supply of demons, he flamed out after only a few books. Nevertheless, everyone should read Hell’s Angels, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72. There’s nothing else like them. Plenty have tried and failed to write gonzo… There was only one Hunter S. Thompson.

But oh the fun a pre-dissipated Thompson would have had writing about the Post in the 1970s: Sally Quinn, Georgetown’s Madame Blavatsky.

Not that much has changed there, when they’re pumping out click-bait headlines such as this:

Don’t make the Post sic Taylor Lorenz on you, video game industry!

QUESTION ASKED: If Elon Musk Is ‘Targeting’ Twitter Employees, Isn’t The Washington Post ‘Targeting’ Elon Musk? If there is a headline, it should probably be: “Elon Musk Agrees With Twitter That Censoring the Hunter Biden Story Was Wrong.”

If Dwoskin and the Post reject that analogy, this is what they are saying: when the media industry holds people to account, it’s noble and justified; but when people outside media hold people to account, it’s an act of targeted harassment. The media then insist these acts of targeted harassment (as they define it) are newsworthy, and the cycle repeats itself.

This was the subtext of last week’s Washington Post expose on Libs of TikTok, which revealed the name of the woman behind the influential rightwing Twitter account. Libs of TikTok collects and republishes videos depicting progressive teachers and activists making comments that attract mockery from conservatives; by exposing the account, The Washington Post sought to shed light on the inner workings of the rightwing outrage machine. But the woman’s identity wasn’t particularly important to the story, and revealing it undoubtedly subjected her to considerable opprobrium.

In response, fans of Libs of TikTok relentlessly assailed the story’s author, Taylor Lorenz. Much of the anti-Lorenz campaign was itself creepy and vile. But it’s getting somewhat difficult to delineate legitimate reporting that serves the public interest from malicious spotlighting of political foes, unless one takes the clearly dubious position that exposes crafted by journalists are de facto legitimate.

To be fair, that is the view of the DNC-MSM: Taylor Lorenz is simply following the new rules of journalism.

GREAT MOMENTS IN PROJECTION:

● Shot: WaPo’s Taylor Lorenz on ‘Libs of TikTok’ Exposé: ‘For All We Knew, This Could Have Been a Foreign Actor.’

During Sunday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” Washington Post tech columnist Taylor Lorenz said one of the reasons she revealed the identity of the so-called “Libs of TikTok” Twitter account poster was because “for all we knew, this could have been a foreign actor.”

Lorenz also said given the “Libs of TikTok” poster’s willingness to conduct interviews with other media outlets, it was “quite important and in the public’s interest” to reveal who she was.

—Jeff Poor, Breitbart.com, yesterday.

● Chaser: German government funds ‘research’ project that doxxed Libs of Tik Tok.

The hit piece on the woman behind Libs of Tik Tok by the Bezos-funded Washington Post‘s professional victim Taylor Lorenz was based on a cyberstalking thread by an ex-Twitter employee who is working on a German-backed project.

Software developer Travis Brown, a former Twitter open source advocate per LinkedIn, unearthed Libs of Tik Tok‘s history on Twitter and posted a thread Saturday detailing information about the account’s profile changes.

Lorenz cited Brown’s series of tweets in her WaPo report published Monday doxing the woman who created the Libs of Tik Tok sleuthing persona.

Brown is working on an ongoing project with support from Prototype Fund, an organization that provides financial support to Brown’s so-called “Hatespeech-Tracker.” Protoype Fund is a project of the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany, which is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

—The Post Millennial, Tuesday.

JONATHAN HAIDT: Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid.

The Democrats have also been hit hard by structural stupidity, though in a different way. In the Democratic Party, the struggle between the progressive wing and the more moderate factions is open and ongoing, and often the moderates win. The problem is that the left controls the commanding heights of the culture: universities, news organizations, Hollywood, art museums, advertising, much of Silicon Valley, and the teachers’ unions and teaching colleges that shape K–12 education. And in many of those institutions, dissent has been stifled: When everyone was issued a dart gun in the early 2010s, many left-leaning institutions began shooting themselves in the brain. And unfortunately, those were the brains that inform, instruct, and entertain most of the country.

Liberals in the late 20th century shared a belief that the sociologist Christian Smith called the “liberal progress” narrative, in which America used to be horrifically unjust and repressive, but, thanks to the struggles of activists and heroes, has made (and continues to make) progress toward realizing the noble promise of its founding. This story easily supports liberal patriotism, and it was the animating narrative of Barack Obama’s presidency. It is also the view of the “traditional liberals” in the “Hidden Tribes” study (11 percent of the population), who have strong humanitarian values, are older than average, and are largely the people leading America’s cultural and intellectual institutions.

But when the newly viralized social-media platforms gave everyone a dart gun, it was younger progressive activists who did the most shooting, and they aimed a disproportionate number of their darts at these older liberal leaders. Confused and fearful, the leaders rarely challenged the activists or their nonliberal narrative in which life at every institution is an eternal battle among identity groups over a zero-sum pie, and the people on top got there by oppressing the people on the bottom. This new narrative is rigidly egalitarian––focused on equality of outcomes, not of rights or opportunities. It is unconcerned with individual rights.

The universal charge against people who disagree with this narrative is not “traitor”; it is “racist,” “transphobe,” “Karen,” or some related scarlet letter marking the perpetrator as one who hates or harms a marginalized group. The punishment that feels right for such crimes is not execution; it is public shaming and social death.

At times, with the full weight of the DNC-MSM behind it: Taylor Lorenz is simply following the new rules of journalism.

DEMOCRACY DIES IN DOXXING — and the WaPo is so proud of its attack on Libs of TikTok (and hoping you’ll pay no attention to the collateral damage they’ve also done) that they’re promoting the article on Twitter:

But note what’s missing from the article: Dear Taylor Lorenz, Brian Stelter, and the Rest of the Press—why not show the videos? “I find it very interesting that Taylor Lorenz can write that entire piece, make sure everyone knows the LibsofTikTok account owner is an Ortodox Jew, and never once bother to actually show or link to the actual videos. The Washington Post will show videos of Chinese protestors, but not the videos of the people on TikTok we’re all talking about.”

Meanwhile: WaPo Releases Statement Filled With Lies in Aftermath of Taylor Lorenz’s ‘Libs of TikTok’ Doxxing.

Fortunately for the owner of the Libs of TickTok account, she’s getting the last laugh on the WaPo: “I don’t think anything better sums up the commitment to incompetence of modern ‘journalism’ than the Washington Post trying to bring down a Twitter account by hypocritically doxxing the owner, then seeing that account add 300,000 followers in 2+ days Just a complete masterpiece. Their follower count as it stands now is 939,700. I anticipate they’ll hit over a million this weekend.”

SO…. LEANING INTO THEIR COMPETENCE?  WaPo Releases Statement Filled With Lies in Aftermath of Taylor Lorenz’s ‘Libs of TikTok’ Doxxing.

OUT ON A LIMB: Brian Stelter: Sometimes I see Libs of Tik Tok videos and think ‘This doesn’t seem right for five-year-olds to learn.’ “Maybe Stelter got away with this because no one was watching? I’m genuinely surprised because this one admission really undermines the dishonest game Taylor Lorenz and others have been playing.”

Related: What @LibsOfTikTok exposed.

More: 10 Very Normal People Taylor Lorenz Doesn’t Want Libs of TikTok To Expose.

DEMOCRACY DIES IN DOXXING: ‘This Is On You!’ Woman With Same Name As Doxxed ‘Libs Of TikTok’ Reveals Threats, Blasts WaPo’s Taylor Lorenz.

DEMOCRACY DIES IN DOXXING — AND THEN LYING ABOUT AFTERWARDS: The Washington Post lies—claims they did not publish details about Libs of Tik Tok’s personal life.

After Taylor Lorenz doxed Libs of Tik Tok in the pages of the Washington Post, that paper released a statement defending the doxing, and defending Lorenz’s journalistic standards.

They also lied, claiming that Lorenz had not published the home address of the Libs of Tik Tok account holder, when in fact, she had. The article was later scrubbed to purge those details, but they were there when the article was published at 6 am on Tuesday.

As Ted Cruz advisor Omri Ceren tweets, “The reason the Washington Post has to falsely deny they disclosed personal info is because it gives away the game. There was no possible public interest in that info. The article was meant to intimidate not inform.”

The New Rules of Journalism, in other words.

IF YOU STRIKE ME DOWN, I SHALL BECOME MORE POWERFUL THAN YOU CAN POSSIBLY IMAGINE: Thank You, Taylor Lorenz. “Lorenz’s attack on LoTT isn’t going as well as she thought it might. She’s currently being served a massive L and is doing what she can to defend herself and, as the left usually does, keep the ideological bubble intact in order to fend off the real truth; that they’re the baddies. In truth, Lorenz did LoTT a favor. The Twitter account was wildly popular but it didn’t have that mainstream exposure. Thanks to Lorenz, more people know about it than ever. More people will begin watching it and as trainwreck after trainwreck scrolls past their screen and they’re unable to look away, they’ll become more familiar with the left as it is today. Parents will see the myriad of teachers in public schools who proudly introduce sex and sexualization to their children and understand why legislators in places like Florida did what they did.”

UPDATE: Babylon Bee CEO announces that he’s worked out a deal to make Libs of Tik Tok’s gig a full-time career.

(Updated and bumped.)

OLD AND BUSTED: WaPo Pursues “All The President’s Men.”

The New Hotness? Unreal: WaPo reporter claimed “severe PTSD” from Internet criticism — and then doxxed an anonymous Twitter user; Update: LibsofTikTok responds.

“They can’t get Twitter to keep Libs of TikTok locked out, because the user doesn’t violate their terms of service. Instead, they’re trying to intimidate her off the platform. And for some reason, the Washington Post has decided to join this crusade by publishing this doxxing effort by Taylor Lorenz, who just was featured less than a fortnight ago sobbing over how these attacks target women. This is utterly despicable, and it is an organizational failure that descends from the very top of the Washington Post’s hierarchy.”

Related: WaPo’s Megan McArdle says woman behind Libs of Tik Tok getting doxxed isn’t really a big deal because she’s just an Orthodox Jew.

STACY MCCAIN: “PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) first came to public attention in reference to Vietnam combat veterans. If we are to believe Taylor Lorenz, people saying mean things about her on Twitter is exactly like getting ambushed by the Vietcong, dodging mortar shells and machine-gun fire in the jungle, watching your buddies bleed to death. Mean tweets are the siege of Khe Sanh in the Tet Offensive, in terms of the psychological trauma inflicted on survivors like Taylor Lorenz.”

Read the whole thing.

A SMALL MEASURE OF ACCOUNTABILITY: New York Times Fires Editor Who Left Profanity-Laced Voicemails for Gun Rights Group After School Shooting.

It must be difficult being a New York Times employee. It can be really hard to know what conduct the company considers acceptable and what will get you canned.

Sarah Jeong has a long history of issuing racist tweets, yet she’s still an editorial writer for the Gray Lady. Reporter Taylor Lorenz has serially embarrassed herself and the newspaper over the years, but still apparently meets the paper of record’s high standards for accuracy and rectitude.

However, when a Wirecutter (a NYT property) editor left some, uh, intemperate voicemails for Great Lakes Gun Rights after a Michigan school shooting, she apparently crossed an invisible line.

The lined dividing bigshots from worker bees.

JOURNALISTS ARE “CENTERING” THEIR “TRAUMA” BECAUSE IT ENABLES THEM TO ACQUIRE POWER:

The state of the media industry is such that journalists are now incentivized to be as effusive as possible in professing how emotionally unstable they are. Why? Because it’s a surefire way to bolster their pleas for a redress of various workplace or personal grievances. No longer are these psychological issues thought to be best dealt with in the privacy of a therapist’s office, or among trusted confidants. Instead, these journalists create a public spectacle, beckoning colleagues to flood their tweet threads and affirm unstinting support. When Taylor Lorenz of the New York Times recounted her own emotional turmoil stemming from allegedly “violent” online criticism, the International Women’s Media Foundation, an NGO devoted to “[recognizing] badass female journalists and photographers whose courage sets them apart,” issued a rousing statement in her defense.

Subsequently, these journalists’ union representation will rush to amplify their grievances by echoing the therapeutic trauma jargon, such as stating matter-of-factly that the workplace policy decisions at the Washington Post are not just ill-advised, poorly-conceived, or even unfair — but “harmful.” Obviously, this harm cannot be externally adjudicated because one’s harm must never be subject to contestation or (god forbid) falsification. So the logic goes, every person has the right to say they are harmed without ever having the legitimacy of that harm questioned, because to question the harm compounds the harm. The New York Times appears to be completely on board with this new harassment/harm framework. With results like these, it’s only rational that more and more journalists are employing therapeutic trauma jargon to advance their professional and social self-interest.

Read the whole thing. When the Times’ crybully staffers melted down over Tom Cotton’s op-ed last year, claiming en masse that “Running this puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger,” I wonder if any long-serving Timesmen who reported from, oh, say, Fallujah or Kabul thought about such melodramatic rhetoric.

OUT ON A LIMB: Criticizing Public Figures, Including Influential Journalists, is Not Harassment or Abuse.

The third reason this New York Times reporter is receiving attention is because she has become a leading advocate and symbol for a toxic tactic now frequently used by wealthy and influential public figures (like her) to delegitimize criticisms and even render off-limits any attempt to hold them accountable. Specifically, she and her media allies constantly conflate criticisms of people like them with “harassment,” “abuse” and even “violence.”

That is what Lorenz did on Tuesday when she co-opted International Women’s Day to announce that “it is not an exaggeration to say that the harassment and smear campaign I have had to endure over the past year has destroyed my life.” She began her story by proclaiming: “For international women’s day please consider supporting women enduring online harassment.” She finished it with this: “No one should have to go through this.” Notably, there was no mention, by her or her many media defenders, of the lives she has harmed or otherwise deleteriously affected with her massive journalistic platform.

That is deliberate. Under this formulation, if you criticize the ways Lorenz uses her very influential media perch — including by pointing out that she probably should stop fabricating accusations against people and monitoring the private acts of non-public people — then you are guilty of harassing a “young woman” and inflicting emotional pain and violence on her (it’s quite a bizarre dynamic, best left to psychologists, how her supporters insist on infantilizing this fully grown, close-to-middle-aged successful journalist by talking about her as if she’s a fragile high school junior; it’s particularly creepy when her good male Allies speak of her this way).

This is worth focusing on precisely because it is now so common among the nation’s political and media elite. By no means is this tactic unique to Lorenz. She did not pioneer it. She is just latching onto it, exploiting it, in order to immunize herself from criticisms of her destructive journalistic misconduct and to depict her critics as violent harassers and abusers. With this framework implanted, there is no way to express criticisms of Taylor Lorenz’s work and the use and abuse of her journalistic platform without standing widely accused of maliciously inciting a mob of violent misogynists to ruin her life — that’s quite a potent shield from accountability for someone this influential in public life.

Read the whole thing. As Iowahawk tweeted yesterday:

Or to use a meme that’s slightly newer than Casablanca:

THE LIVES OF OTHERS WAS NOT INTENDED AS A JOURNALISTIC HOW-TO GUIDE: “Factually: What will fact-checkers find on Clubhouse?”, asks an article at Poynter.org:

There is a new social media platform trending worldwide. It’s called Clubhouse and it brings together people like Tesla’s Elon Musk and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. For the moment, it seems to be beyond the reach of the broader fact-checking community, but this should change soon.

I joined Clubhouse this week. And it was only possible because I own an iPhone. The hot new network only runs on iOS.

To be accepted, I also had to deploy an invitation code. Downloading the app isn’t enough. To be a Clubhouse user you must know the right people …

As reported by tech websites and popular newspapers, Clubhouse aims to be the most exclusive social media platform ever launched. It offers its users the opportunity to enter different chat rooms (clubs) and share live audio feeds — not text or images — with thousands of other people. Rooms are divided by topic and you can even schedule your participation by scrolling through what discussions will be up in the next hours.

Clubhouse was mentioned in the Sunday Glenn Greenwald article in which he noted that the New York Times’ hall monitor Taylor Lorenz falsely accused Netscape founder Marc Andreessen of using (gasp!) the word “retard:”

Lorenz lied. Andreessen never used that word. And rather than apologize and retract it, she justified her mistake by claiming it was a “male voice” that sounded like his, then locked her Twitter account as though she — rather than the person she falsely maligned — was the victim.

But the details of what happened are revealing. The discussion which Lorenz falsely described took place on a relatively new audio app called “Clubhouse,” 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 noted this week, “as the app has grown, people of more diverse backgrounds have begun to join,” and it “has carved out a niche among Black users, who have innovated new ways for using it.” Its free-speech ethos has also made it increasingly popular in China as a means of avoiding repressive online constraints.

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 “reporting” consists of out-of-context statements designed to make the participants look bigoted, insensitive, or otherwise guilty of bad behavior. 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.

As Twitter use “PoliMath” adds, “The desire to hold discussions in Clubhouse ‘accountable’ is kind of insane It would be like demanding entry to someone’s house for a party and going around butting in on everyone’s conversation to make sure they don’t say something bad.”

Exit quote from the Poynter article: “On Monday, after a rare moment of cross-border dialogue between users from mainland China and others outside the country, Chinese censors moved in. If Xi Jinping’s administration isn’t ignoring Clubhouse, why should fact-checkers? Why should you?”

GLENN GREENWALD: The Journalistic Tattletale and Censorship Industry Suffers Several Well-Deserved Blows: 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.

A new and rapidly growing journalistic “beat” 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.

I’ve written before about one particularly toxic strain of this authoritarian “reporting.” Teams of journalists at three of the most influential corporate media outlets — CNN’s “media reporters” (Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy), NBC’s “disinformation space unit” (Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny), and the tech reporters of The New York Times (Mike Isaac, Kevin Roose, Sheera Frenkel) — devote the bulk of their “journalism” 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’s loudest media companies when they do not. . . .

The profound pathologies 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’ star tech reporters, Taylor Lorenz. She falsely and very publicly accused Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor Marc Andreessen of having used the “slur” word “retarded” during a discussion about the Reddit/GameStop uprising.

Lorenz lied. Andreessen never used that word. And rather than apologize and retract it, she justified her mistake by claiming it was a “male voice” that sounded like his, then locked her Twitter account as though she — rather than the person she falsely maligned — was the victim.

But the details of what happened are revealing. The discussion which Lorenz falsely described took place on a relatively new audio app called “Clubhouse,” 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 noted this week, “as the app has grown, people of more diverse backgrounds have begun to join,” and it “has carved out a niche among Black users, who have innovated new ways for using it.” Its free-speech ethos has also made it increasingly popular in China as a means of avoiding repressive online constraints.

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 “reporting” consists of out-of-context statements designed to make the participants look bigoted, insensitive, or otherwise guilty of bad behavior. 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.

Fulfilling her ignoble duties there, Lorenz announced on Twitter that Andreessen had said a bad word. During the discussion of the “Reddit Revolution,” she claimed, he used the word “retarded.” 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 — thus exposing those who were guilty of the crime of failing to object to Andreessen’s Bad Word. . . .

Numerous Clubhouse participants, including Kmele Foster, immediately documented that Lorenz had lied. The moderator of the discussion, Nait Jones, said that “Marc never used that word.” What actually happened was that Felicia Horowitz, a different participant in the discussion, had “explained that the Redditors call themselves ‘retard revolution’” and that was the only mention of that word. . . .

Besides the fact that a New York Times reporter recklessly tried to destroy someone’s reputation, what is wrong with this episode? Everything.

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 conversations. As Jones pointedly noted, “this is why people block” journalists: “because of this horseshit dishonesty.” . . .

Just take a second to ponder how infantile and despotic, in equal parts, all of this is. This NYT reporter used her platform to virtually jump out of her desk to run to the teacher and exclaim: he used the r word! 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.

These people are a disgrace to journalism, and to America. They are morally retarded.

And they like it that way.

Plus:

But this is now 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 — tattling, hall monitoring, speech policing: all in the most anti-intellectual, adolescent and primitive ways — is all they have. It’s all they are. It’s why they have fully earned the contempt and distrust in which the public holds them. . . .

That’s 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 — especially those who call themselves “journalists” — 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.

Greenwald and I have had our disagreements, but damn has he nailed it here.

THE JOURNALISTIC TATTLETALE AND CENSORSHIP INDUSTRY SUFFERS SEVERAL WELL-DESERVED BLOWS:

The profound pathologies 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’ star tech reporters, Taylor Lorenz. She falsely and very publicly accused Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor Marc Andreessen of having used the “slur” word “retarded” during a discussion about the Reddit/GameStop uprising.

Lorenz lied. Andreessen never used that word. And rather than apologize and retract it, she justified her mistake by claiming it was a “male voice” that sounded like his, then locked her Twitter account as though she — rather than the person she falsely maligned — was the victim.

But the details of what happened are revealing. The discussion which Lorenz falsely described took place on a relatively new audio app called “Clubhouse,” 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 noted this week, “as the app has grown, people of more diverse backgrounds have begun to join,” and it “has carved out a niche among Black users, who have innovated new ways for using it.” Its free-speech ethos has also made it increasingly popular in China as a means of avoiding repressive online constraints.

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 “reporting” consists of out-of-context statements designed to make the participants look bigoted, insensitive, or otherwise guilty of bad behavior. 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.

Fulfilling her ignoble duties there, Lorenz announced on Twitter that Andreessen had said a bad word. During the discussion of the “Reddit Revolution,” she claimed, he used the word “retarded.” 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 — thus exposing those who were guilty of the crime of failing to object to Andreessen’s Bad Word:

Besides the fact that a New York Times reporter recklessly tried to destroy someone’s reputation, what is wrong with this episode? Everything.

Numerous Clubhouse participants, including Kmele Foster, immediately documented that Lorenz had lied. The moderator of the discussion, Nait Jones, said that “Marc never used that word.” What actually happened was that Felicia Horowitz, a different participant in the discussion, had “explained that the Redditors call themselves ‘retard revolution’” and that was the only mention of that word.

Rather than apologizing and retracting, Lorenz thanked Jones for “clarifying,” and then emphasized how hurtful it is to use that word. She deleted the original tweet without comment, and then — with the smear fully realized — locked her account.

Besides the fact that a New York Times reporter recklessly tried to destroy someone’s reputation, what is wrong with this episode? Everything.

Read the whole thing. Exit quote:

But this is now 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 — tattling, hall monitoring, speech policing: all in the most anti-intellectual, adolescent and primitive ways — is all they have. It’s all they are. It’s why they have fully earned the contempt and distrust in which the public holds them.

The Gray Lady’s Thought Police are really working overtime these days: It’s Official: Linguistic Intent No Longer Matters at The New York Times.