After years of doxxing innocent Americans for their political views, mainstream media journalists are now upset that their own racist and antisemitic tweets have been complied by conservative allies of President Trump.
Last week, a New York Times editor, Tom Wright-Piersanti, was demoted after 10-year-old tweets mocking Jews and American Indians resurfaced and were widely covered by conservative outlets. On Sunday, the New York Times reported that Wright-Piersanti’s archived social media posts were part of the White House’s “aggressive operation to discredit news organizations.”
The Times report decried this tactic, arguing that targeting individuals is acceptable when journalists do it to other people, but not when other people do it to them.
“But using journalistic techniques to target journalists and news organizations as retribution for — or as a warning not to pursue — coverage critical of the president is fundamentally different from the well-established role of the news media in scrutinizing people in positions of power,” wrote reporters Jeremy Peters and Kenneth Vogel.
The New York Times publisher A. G. Sulzberger said in a statement to the paper of record’s staff that such tactics were taking the president’s campaign against a free press to a new level.
“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.”
Sulzberger’s concern over the intimidation of journalists fails to address and even excuses the racist and antisemitic views of his own staff, but also fails to acknowledge the mainstream media’s aggressive history of intimidating private individuals because they support the president or hold conservative political views.
Last February, a CNN crew showed up on an elderly woman’s lawn in Florida to publicly shame her for unknowingly sharing a “Russian-coordinated event” on her Facebook page. Consequently, the woman received waves of violent threats, abuse, and harassment online.
In June, the Daily Beast reporter Kevin Poulsen doxxed a black forklift operator from New York who doctored a video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
National media outlets have harassed countless other private individuals who support the president on social media or create memes. Yet publications such as the New York Times become outraged when conservatives point out that their own employees spew virulent, racist, and antisemitic views on social media — and remain employed.
Other conservatives on Twitter noted the hypocrisy.
Aside from the *vast right-wing conspiracy* stuff — and it’s sheer projection from a rag that supports actual left-wing conspiracies to shut down conservative media — the @nytimes is saying there should be a lower standard re: racism/antisemitism for mainstream media journalists. https://t.co/xcEyZHtddj
— Joel B. Pollak (@joelpollak) August 26, 2019
It’s kind of amazing that a NY Times editor had several anti-Semitic tweets and their response is to blame the people who found them and then play the victim to some sort of targeted campaign.
— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) August 26, 2019
Who could have possibly predicted that cancel culture would be weaponized back against its proponents? https://t.co/LhEhpWdlvI
— James Hasson (@JamesHasson20) August 25, 2019
Maybe going after forklift operators and gifmakers wasn’t such a good idea. Now here we are. https://t.co/mEpD1kMp3E
— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) August 25, 2019
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
— Mike Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) August 25, 2019
