Today’s Required Reading: The New York Times Devalues the 1st Amendment Again

dbdailyupdate ^ | David Blackmon

[EyesOfTX]

The corrupt news media is now attempting to make itself immune to criticism. – That’s the only message one can take away from a kerfuffle that broke out yesterday between Fox News’s Tucker Carlson and the leftist creeps who run the New York Times. It’s a little complicated, so bear with me here.

The whole thing started on Tuesday when young, white and oh, so privileged New York Times reporter Taylor Lorenz sent out the tweet below:

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As Carlson pointed out during his monologue that very night, this “smear campaign” consists of other Twitter users pointing out all of the outright lies she’s included in some of her recent reports. Which is a very easy task to complete given the nature of Lorenz’s “reporting.”

Here’s a clip of Carlson’s monologue:

In defense of their privileged reporter whose life is a bowl of cherries compared to 99% of the other human beings on earth, the Times management responded by sending out the statement below:

Ok, so, Tucker criticizes Lorenz in exactly the way she has gone after so many others on Twitter and in the pages of the New York Times, and Tucker’s the “cruel” bad guy. Because of course he is. Because the Times wants its people to be immune from criticism. It’s the very same evil, despicable tactic being used by Meghan Markle now to go after Piers Morgan, filing a complaint with Britain’s speech regulator alleging that Morgan’s pointing out the truth about the serial lies she told Oprah Sunday night is damaging to her fragile psyche.

It’s one thing for a g-list has-been actress pretending to be a princess to take such actions to try to silence her critics; it is quite another for a prominent member of the American news media to take them against American citizens. For the New York Times to be actively supporting this kind of overt censorship betrays a complete abandonment of its role as a protector of the First Amendment.

The whole sordid episode got the attention of liberal writer Glenn Greenwald, who weighed in with an epic piece excoriating the privileged Ms. Lorenz and her bullying bosses at the Times. It is a wonderful and informative read that you should take the time to consume today.

Here’s an excerpt to whet your appetite:

The most powerful and influential newspaper in the U.S., arguably the West, is The New York Times. Journalists who write for it, especially those whose work is featured on its front page or in its op-ed section, wield immense power to shape public discourse, influence thought, set the political agenda for the planet’s most powerful nation, expose injustices, or ruin the lives of public figures and private citizens alike. That is an enormous amount of power in the hands of one media institution and its employees. That’s why it calls itself the Paper of Record.

One of the Paper of Record’s star reporters, Taylor Lorenz, has been much discussed of late. That is so for three reasons. The first is that the thirty-six-year-old tech and culture reporter has helped innovate a new kind of reportorial beat that seems to have a couple of purposes. She publishes articles exploring in great detail the online culture of teenagers and very young adults, which, as a father of two young Tik-Tok-using children, I have found occasionally and mildly interesting. She also seeks to catch famous and non-famous people alike using bad words or being in close digital proximity to bad people so that she can alert the rest of the world to these important findings. It is natural that journalists who pioneer a new form of reporting this way are going to be discussed.

The second reason Lorenz is the topic of recent discussion is that she has been repeatedly caught fabricating claims about influential people, and attempting to ruin the reputations and lives of decidedly non-famous people. In the last six weeks alone, she twice publicly lied about Netscape founder Marc Andreessen: once claiming he used the word “retarded” in a Clubhouse room in which she was lurking (he had not) and then accusing him of plotting with a white nationalist in a different Clubhouse room to attack her (he, in fact, had said nothing).

She also often uses her large, powerful public platform to malign private citizens without any power or public standing by accusing them of harboring bad beliefs and/or associating with others who do. (She is currently being sued by a citizen named Arya Toufanian, who claims Lorenz has used her private Twitter account to destroy her reputation and business, particularly with a tweet that Lorenz kept pinned at the top of her Twitter page for eight months, while several other non-public figures complain that Lorenz has “reported” on their non-public activities). It is to be expected that a New York Times journalist who gets caught lying as she did against Andreessen and trying to destroy the reputations of non-public figures will be a topic of conversation.

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.”

[End]

Go read the rest of it. It will be the best 15 minutes of time you invest today. Promise.

That is all.

[VeniVidiVici]

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