Posted on 04/20/2022 2:14:51 PM PDT by edwinland
The Washington Post, in the person of sobbing wokestress Taylor Lorenz, ran a story the other day about the “Libs of TikTok” account. I said some half-hearted things in defense of it initially. After a second look, I take them all back. If the Columbia Journalism School offered a class called “Dogshit Exposés,” this would be on the prospectus. It may not be first-week material, but it’s in the course.
As a general rule, anyone volunteering to enter the public discourse who has influence is fair game for journalists. We have strictures against outing assault victims, jurors, some varieties of whistleblower, and a few other groups. A vitriolic social media account, particularly one that gives interviews to the New York Post, doesn’t rate. LibsOfTikTok, basically an ongoing sizzle reel of loony classroom justice warriors acting out, really has had influence on controversial legislation, and the public has the right to know, for instance, if it’s being funded by the Koch Brothers or a group like ALEC.
It isn’t, however, and that’s where we start with “Meet the woman behind Libs of TikTok, secretly fueling the right’s outrage machine.” Reading the article, I imagined Lorenz sedating Post editors with blowdarts and uploading the piece while they were asleep. There’s just nothing in it. “LibsOfTikTok” is not run by a deep-pocketed political concern but by a random Internet person not long removed from running a parody account featuring Joe Biden tweeting as a houseplant.
If you’re going to do a story like this, where the big reveal is someone’s identity, at least put some work into it. Who is Chaya, the woman behind LibsOfTikTok? Where did she grow up? What influenced her? ... Even the person completely opposed to what this account does learns nothing about it, except one thing: the name.
(Excerpt) Read more at taibbi.substack.com ...
WaPo is not a serious newspaper. It’s just a playground for spoiled self-impressed J school brats. Lorenz probably isn’t even the worst one they have. Bring back the ink stained wretches. At least they got off of their asses and got real stories.
Since FREE REPUBLIC chooses to have the truth on their website, does that mean they are secretly fueling right wing outrage???????
I don’t think it’s a nothing burger. It is a lesson in the evil of left wingers. This vile Taylor woman doxxed the site author in the hopes that someone would visit bodily harm on her. Lorentz is an evil POS with her phony emotional outrage at being doxxed herself. Sociopaths don’t feel emotion. But they are excellent at faking it if it serves their purposes.
I didn't read the article (following the Free Republic credo), but - unless the article provided clarification - I agree that this is 'not a nothingburger'. Someone revealing the name, address, and other family names, on the internet is very dangerous. It is inviting people with loose screws (of which there are many on the left) to attack the person whose identify was revealed. That is wrong, and the person(s) who did this should be punished.
The Wash Compost is perfectly fine with maintaining the anonymity of major influencers. For instance, they NEVER published the name of the so called “whistle blower” behind Adam Schiff’s ridiculous impeachment circus.
And, unlike Libs of TikTok, the background of the fake “whistle blower” should rightfully have been examined to determine the credibility of the his charges against a sitting President.
They doxxed the Libs of TikTok out of spite; because they want the owner(s) of this account to be harassed and intimidated.
She comes from a very large, very extended family where many of the females under 40 share the name of a deceased matriarch. It’s not this woman alone who is endangered.
And viewers to the tiktok are up substantially. lol
Taibbi is saying that the underlying justification for the article is a nothingburger. He is saying that sometimes the identity of someone who prefers to remain anonymous is relevant to a story, and journalists should investigate if it is. But in this case, the woman’s identity doesn’t add anything to the story that people didn’t already know — that the person behind the TikTok is conservative, and therefore the journalist had no excuse to reveal her identity, so the purpose of the article was pure doxxing.
Yes. That’s true but the actual fallout from all this is far from a nothing burger. It is an act of pure evil by a psycho who hoped to get someone else seriously harmed.
Correct. Which is why Taibbi does not call the doxxing a nothingburger, in fact he takes away the only argument the doxxers have for why they did it — that it’s relevant to the story — by showing that the identity of the person is not relevant and hence the doxxing is not only bad but also entirely unjustified.
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