Wesley
@WesleyLowery
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Journalist | Author | Correspondent [email protected]
Joined May 2008
the lede: I’ve spent years reporting on the rise in white racial violence - against immigrants, Muslims, Jews and black Americans - since America elected its first black president. The result, AMERICAN WHITELASH, is out in June. You can preorder it now
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since this will come up a lot in media coverage of Tyre Nichols in Memphis: while I get that it seems narratively significant that the officers are black. Statistically, it is unsurprising. In tracking police violence, we never found that race of the officer made much difference.
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I’m not sure what the right answer is, but there is something untoward/icky about the spectacle of counting down to the video release like this.
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Why didn't Tyre Nichols comply? Why did he run?. It appears clear that he was scared and did not trust these police officers with his life. Their actions, as captured on video, proved him right.
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a few thoughts on the videos of Tyre Nichols' killing by Memphis police. .
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before the videos even begin: We're told this began with a traffic stop - why was he removed from the car? The officers involved were from so-called Scorpion squad. Any time you hear about a police "elite" squad it should raise suspicion -- these teams are often hotbeds of abuse.
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on that point: this squad was created as part of Memphis' response to rising violent crime in recent years, deploying what's known as "hot spot" policing -heavy enforcement on small groups of people. In this way, Nichols' death seems linked to our moment's reactionary politics.
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the greatest threat to the officers were their fellow officers -- at no point do we see Tyre Nichols harming any of the officers, however the officers managed to pepper spray themselves multiple times.
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What threat did Tyre Nichols present to these officers, to the public? How was the safety of the citizens of Memphis improved by the behavior of these officers on that night? How was the public served?.
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The value of the next body camera video is the audio. The video is often obscured. But the audio tells a story. As Tyre Nichols is on the ground dying, the officers are comparing their stories and settling on a narrative "he was going for your gun" etc etc "he must be on drugs".
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At this point, Tyre Nichols does the only reasonable thing -- he runs from the people viciously attacking him. Police often talk about the "run tax" -- if you make them chase you, they're going to rough you up. One officer says this explicitly: "I hope they stomp his ass".
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the black political class hasn’t been this united and mobilized since 2012. the calls and group chats these last 48 hours have been…something else.
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body camera video begins with the officer wearing the camera immediately escalating. During the arrest, the officers shout contradictory commands (mixed in with verbal attacks) -- show us your hands as they're holding his hands, get on the ground as he's on already on the ground.
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It's been more than 100 years since a riotous white mob destroyed her family's home and murdered her neighbors. No one has been held accountable. No redress has been paid. And so, Viola Fletcher and I spent her 109th birthday sitting in a Tulsa courtroom.
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this also applies to the narrative focus on "white" officers in cases like Ferguson, Walter Scott, etc etc. What this implies - often unintentionally - is that the issue here is personal (or personal prejudice) and not systemic (something any officer could get caught up in).
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These videos offer little evidence of the necessity of ANY of this police violence and escalation -- removing him from the car, pepper spray, tasing, chasing, kicking, baton strikes, more pepper spray, more kicking, punching.
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this excellent. worth noting was a zero percent chance of getting something like this published as straight “news” in 2014 or 15. Instead It would have been a piece full of police “experts” explaining how *actually what the cops did was reasonable”
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How many police press releases will be written up as fact -no caveats and no scrutiny - by journalists across the country tonight? tomorrow? next week?.
The initial press release Memphis Police posted read that Tyre Nichols “complained of having a shortness of breath”. The video shows police punching him several times, kicking in the head and chest multiple times, pepper spraying him
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Stop for a moment here. Imagine if all we had were these body camera videos. Ok. Now the birds-eye view tape. .
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finishing up my intro to investigative reporting syllabus and I just need to say: not enough people know about the Sun-Times buying and operating a bar in Chicago in 1978, writing the best lede of all time, and then getting shut out of the Pulitzers cause Ben Bradlee was big mad
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I have to say - not having a reliable system for knowing who to trust (much less a reality in which a verified checkmark is best understood as a sign that you're not trustworthy) has made this website far less useful in moments like this.
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what if -- hear me out, I know this will sound crazy -- we received our vital news and information in a way divorced from capitalistic pressures like "ratings" and "viewers" and "traffic" and then we could focus on things like "facts" and "journalism" and "informing people"?.
Just in: CNN's town hall with Donald Trump averaged 3.1 million total viewers. The event outrated Fox and MSNBC, as expected, but these are not 2015/16 level numbers for Trump — not even close.
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We see Tyre Nichols on the ground, seemingly handcuffed. As additional officers approach, they get their licks in. Two officers hold him down as a third takes at least 3 winding kicks at Nichols' head.
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Tyre Nichols is stood up, still handcuffed and being held up by multiple officers. From there at least one -- possibly two -- officers deliver haymaker punches to his head.
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recall the story of Alex Kueng: he joined the Minneapolis police because he thought he could fix things. On his third day on the job he stood by as George Floyd was killed
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you wouldn’t have to spend all of this time fact-checking - and thus repeating to your audience - all of the lies if you hadn’t just broadcast them to millions of people for an hour. just a thought.
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FWIW: I'm not arguing that it's unreasonable for people to look at these officers and wonder if/assert that the charges wouldn't have come so quickly were they white. I'm just noting that its unsurprising that black officers would be the ones charged in something like this.
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think for a moment how different this incident would look if we *only* had the body camera videos. It’s that surveillance camera that told so much of the story.
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the self proclaimed upholders of objectivity, neutrality and journalistic virtue are publicly attacking young people whose politics they don’t like because those young people dared to politely decline to be interviewed
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it’s chilling and gross for the top editors of the New York Times to threaten to suspend or fire journalists for exercising their First Amendment rights by critiquing coverage. Antithetical to what one would imagine would be core, sacrosanct values: free speech and public debate
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It's been a rough few weeks in terms of media layoffs so I want to flag a job I'm helping hire for: @prisonjourn, which trains incarcerated people as journalists and helps them get published, is hiring a managing editor to run all of its editorial strategy
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@conor64 @jduffyrice @thomaschattwill The boycotts upended the entire local economy -- the city lost massive amounts of revenue and had to limit services, businesses closed, people lost jobs. Inconvenience to others is the stick, it's among reasons that protests can be effective.
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The Graying of America’s Prisons: .There are more than 160k incarcerated people 55 or older. It was 48k twenty years ago. starting today @prisonjourn is publishing work about what it's like to age in prison written and reported by incarcerated journalists
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there is no reasonable standard by which anything Coates has written would be inappropriate for a college level African American studies course
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something changed in that moment after the debate, when people started calling not only for biden to drop but for harris to be passed over. a whole lot of people took that personally.
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fearing Lincoln’s election would lead to the national abolition of slavery (a hyperbolic, reactionary response), a series of southern states seceded from the union and formed an avowedly white supremacist confederacy of slave states. that was the cause of the civil war.
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who has been killing them? using weapons funded and manufactured by whom?.
This has been an extraordinarily dangerous year for press around the world. Many killed, many more wounded, hundreds detained, attacked, threatened, injured – simply for doing their jobs. I am profoundly grateful to the press for getting accurate, timely information to people.
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recap: DeSantis appoints partisans w/no expertise to rewrite FL's history textbooks. They write slavery had "benefit" for those enslaved. VP Harris notes slavery did not "benefit" the enslaved. National Review calls VP "evil." Conor Friedersdorf & Twitter contrarians co-sign.
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Since Twitter is having its annual "why do people protest in ways I don't like /that inconvenience me/that I don't personally find wise?!" discourse, an excerpt from MLK's Letter from a Birmingham Jail. The *point* of nonviolent protest is to create a crisis/tension/inconvenience
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This is stunning - truly a bombshell. This criticism from MLK of Malcolm X is a key foundations upon which the two men's relationship has been understood. It calls into question the work of Alex Haley -- and the accuracy of the Autobiography of Malcom X
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journalism is things the bosses and power brokers like. activism is things the bosses and power brokers don’t like.
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there are lots of fair critiques of pre-Musk Twitter, but that company unquestionably prioritized and invested significant resources in boosting factual information and discourse in moments of true consequence in a way that is now completely absent from this site.
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nearly all of the articles published post-GA indictment pondering Giuliani's character arch skip over the time he led a racist mob rally claiming that David Dinkins had stolen an election from him and used that racial grievance to get elected mayor. Seems like a key plot point. .
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“balance” is not a journalistic value and one of the greatest failing of the post-Watergate generations of journalists (especially but far from exclusively on television) has been allowing it to become considered one.
This is a real dilemma: for "balance" media needs right-wing voices but choice is either Trumpist (who represent genuine popular right but are liars) or Never Trump (who are more respectable but basically represent no one).
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bouie is perhaps the only columnist in america currently worth reading every single week. give him his pulitzer.
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.@roywoodjr meeting @VP and then promptly getting in an argument with his mother about their brunch plans - backstage at the WHCD, moments before taking the stage - is one of my favorite scenes i’ve ever published
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.@mehdirhasan is the best on-camera newsmaker interviewer in journalism. someone give him a livelier version of what Charlie Rose once did. If you vow to measure the impact of your investment based on the quality of the journalism, not ratings or clicks, i’ll EP the first season.
MSNBC cancels Mehdi Hasan show @maxwelltani
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juneteenth as a national holiday is still so new, we’re still defining its vibe /feel /tradition. i’m all for making Juneteenth a massive musical event /live concert night. and if that happens, Kendrick setting that precedent is actually, literally historic and legendary.
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American journalism has been stuck in a circular debate about "objectivity" while our industry - and our democracy - die. It's time to move on. But to do so, the journalistic establishment must recognize critiques for what they actually are.
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chris licht: the latest in a line of media leaders who burned their own house down with their determination to be antiwoke and prove their “independence” from liberals who criticize them on twitter.
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we got him to say more lies on national television than anyone else!!!!!.
Chris Licht at CNN’s morning news meeting said “I am aware that there are people with opinions-slash-backlash. you do not have to like the former president's answers, but you can't say we didn't get them,” per attendee.
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someone please provide me with the definitions of “activist” and “journalists” in this context. should be easy enough since the line is allegedly so clear
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today brings us a new greatest hits in “the appearance of objectivity” cannon: newspaper that is currently running an international press freedom campaign - directly involving its reporters and editors - fires a reporter for being elected to run a press freedom group.
Today I was fired from the Wall Street Journal. This is my statement:
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I agree on the journalistic necessity of Mehdi’s voice and skill in this particular moment. And also: this is what happens when we allow market forces to determine our news ecosystem. The market will not support the news and information needs of a healthy multiracial democracy.
It is bad optics for MSNBC to cancel @mehdirhasan’s show right at a time when he is vocal for human rights in Gaza with the war ongoing. As a strong supporter of free speech, MSNBC owes the public an explanation for this decision. Why would they choose to do this now?.
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if only there had been anyway to predict that this would happen this way. if only anyone had warned CNN that this was a wildly irresponsible thing to do…. *stares blankly into the abyss*.
Even in a world where @kaitlancollins was correcting every Trump lie as they spewed forth -- and we are pretty far from that world -- the braying crowd would make Trump look like the victor.
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@conor64 @_jack_fox_ @JeffreyASachs @charlescwcooke Why would this be a crucial thing to be taught about the institution of slavery? What expert /historian of slavery agrees that this is a point that needs to be made or prioritized when teaching students?.
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political reporters often silence colleagues by claiming others lack of perceived neutrality makes their jobs harder. Does Peter Baker attacking protesters, on issues he doesn’t cover, makes his colleagues jobs easier or harder? Will he get a “your tweet” email?.
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@Felonious_munk @amberwaves guy who stands in the front of the swag surf and coordinates the pace.
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it's wild to me that journalists don't understand that hyperbolic circling of wagons anytime one of our friends does something poorly/dumb - these Trumpian declarations like "A better job has never been done in the history of moderating!" - undermines our collective credibility.
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A project everyone should read - perhaps especially today on Juneteenth. Do you know about the first systemic attempt to provide benefits/reparations to those formerly enslaved? . Thousands were given land. Then it was taken back. 🧵
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if only there was a robust section of our press core devoted to nothing but campus speech issues who could get to the bottom of this! a clear case of cancel culture!.
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i can’t be the only one who finds all of this completely confusing and experientially unenjoyable, right?.
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Many of you read and shared Joe Garcia's essay in the New Yorker about listening to Taylor Swift while in prison. Hoping you'll consider donating to the Prison Journalism Project (@prisonjourn) which helped get that piece published (a short thread)
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one issue with the news desert framing (which has been valuable!), is that it misses places like DC - which has as many journalists per capita as any place in the world yet whose residents starve for local coverage and civic information. the shuttering of @DCist is a crisis.
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I’m not sure that highlighting the fact that no American state had elected a minority woman as governor until…2011… is the strongest evidence in favor of the take that “America is not a racist country” but what do I know.
Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley invokes her own boundary-breaking record on race:. “Joe and Kamala even say America’s racist … Take it from me, the first minority female governor in history: America is not a racist country.”
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These are the closing paragraphs of American Whitelash, which I published earlier this year
From the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Department:. “Portions of these manifestos detail the shooter's disgusting ideology of hate. This shooting was racially motivated and he hated black people.”
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would caution those hoping to use rhetoric centering these convictions in political arguments against Trump to be mindful of not making sweeping, dehumanizing statements about “felons” and “convicted felons” etc.
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The WH Correspondents Dinner is loud, lavish and largely inconsequential. (Press freedom matters! A big party does not!). Except to the comedian. This year's act had as much to lose (and possibly gain) as any ever. So I spent the weekend w/@roywoodjr
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fix this, Joe Biden.
Luke Combs’ cover of “Fast Car” surpasses the Hot 100 peak of the original Tracy Chapman version.
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Pretty wild to see the NYPost ---the NYPost -- to the left of NYC's Democratic establishment (and, in tone, the coverage in the NYT) on this.
Today's cover: Jordan Neely had long history of mental health issues before tragic NYC subway chokehold death
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I spent time in Memphis last week after the police killing of Tyre Nichols. For @TheAtlantic I wrote about the great reckoning that never happened, the failings of reform, critical race theory, and the Evidence of Things Not Seen.
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this is lunacy. Trump was not "pinned down" on anything. He was not "held accountable" in any meaningful way. We learned nothing about what a second term would be like -- cause he'll change his mind 900 times between now and then. Literally no one has argued Trump be "ignored"
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this seems, to me, to be the worst ethical lapse by far of the various ethical lapses documented in recent weeks. in a normal world, this would prompt a timely resignation.
Exclusive: Conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo arranged for the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to be paid tens of thousands of dollars for consulting work nearly a decade ago, specifying that her name be left off billing paperwork.
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this is the most remarkable video i’ve ever watched in my life
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when the NYT sues a government agency for the release of public records, is that not both an act of activism and of journalism? Almost as if there is not a clear line between the two.
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“we have written and signed this letter as journalists, who believe that by writing and signing a letter our colleagues are no longer journalists but instead activists”.
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A newsroom, like any workplace, aims to create an environment where everyone feels safe and supported. And also: if you work the NYT you are publishing in the most powerful media outlet in the world. Critiques of the work should not just be expected, they should be welcome.
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it would be statistically impossible for the united states to have a “greater willingness to lock people up”.
Mental health interventions (smthg real, not the BS we now do), greater willingness to lock ppl up (w/protocols in place for civil libs) who are deemed to be threats, fortification of soft targets, coordination of media response to not lionize shooters, etc.
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by writing a letter to the head of the Guild are these NYT reporters behaving as activists or journalists?.
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the images in the body camera videos truly are not much different than many of the videos we’ve seen over the years (the beating video is a little different). Contradictory, confusing instructions people can’t reasonably comply with is a mainstay of police interaction videos.
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let’s be clear: feeling attacked by your colleagues is not fun. also: the journalistic old guard attacks colleagues all the time - they just do it through gossip and leaks. I’d take a colleague willing to sign their name to a full throated public critique over that any day.
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we've reached the point where rightwing pollsters are providing more forthright and honest assessments of the GOP electorate than the editors of the New York Times
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there is something fundamentally broken with a media culture that believes there is a distinction between “straight-news reporter” and “pro-democracy activist” and that misunderstanding of the role of institutions in a democracy (to uphold democracy) is what has brought us here.
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question for NYT leadership: are media diversity orgs like NABJ, AAJA & NAHJ considered "advocacy organizations"? If so, are NYT staffers are not allowed to serve on their boards/have their names appear on the letters those organizations often send concerning coverage concerns?.
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@peterbakernyt @kaitlancollins i thought you don’t take strong positions on public issues?.
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fox news messages underscore a point made previously by many but worth repeating: the baseless attacks conservative media levels at everyone else -- that we're actually political operatives who prioritize agenda & narrative over facts -- are in fact true of. conservative media.
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@BenjySarlin 1. there is no reason to interview Trump live.2. majority of tv journalists aren’t capable of the kind of interview someone like him requires .3. after the fact fact checking *spreads the lies* and does not work .4. dumb cable news conventions - a voter townhall!! - don’t work.
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sometimes when I'm writing (more accurately, procrastinating writing) I just sit there and marvel at the genius of "But the Mirage was never quite what it seemed.".
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this guidance is interesting. first thing that sticks out: “each newsroom employee is acting *at all times* as a representative of the AJC”. counterpoint: no, they aren’t? Taking a newsroom job means you literally no longer have *any* private life/speech?.
Email to AJC employees: “Guidance on social media and opinion relating to war in Gaza and protests”
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RIP to Charles Ogletree - a legal giant, who learned from Thurgood Marshall and mentored a student named Barack Obama.
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Each day, scores of journalists use euphemism instead of clarity. As I wrote in 2020, this is not just a journalistic failure but a moral one. Concealing the truth from our readers, in cases when there is no factual dispute, is wrong
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Let's be clear: it is legitimate to teach about the resilience, resourcefulness and innovativeness of the enslaved. However, when you write there were things about slavery that worked to "benefit" of the enslaved, people are gonna read that as you saying slavery had "benefits".
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NYT reporters and editors serve on the boards of journalism and first amendment advocacy organizations — should they be fired for violating the “line” between being an activist and a journalist?.
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@JakeTheSnakeWWF the counter point there would be Walter Scott, where Michael Slager was fired and charged before the video came out. Understandable why people would note potential role of officers' race -- and also, could just be that the video is *that bad*.
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In the context of January 6, I think it is impossible to read Trump’s statement this morning as anything other than a call for political violence - I hope that, unlike in the run-up to January 6, our institutions (law enforcement, media) treat it as such.
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Retweet.
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Jonathan Capehart quits Washington Post editorial board, leaving no people of color
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you know, all of this wapo drama makes me really interested in reading some fresh, deep reporting and sweeping writing about Will Lewis role in the UK phone hacking scandal.
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an amazing human who leaves a remarkable legacy.
Hi all, this is Ady’s wife, Rachael. I’m devastated to share the news that Ady has died from complications of ALS. You probably knew Ady as a healthcare activist. But more importantly he was a wonderful dad and my life partner for 18 years. [1/4]
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