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Nobody Should Listen to Twitter Mobs

Rejected submission by Anonymous Coward at 2018-08-15 08:16:10
Digital Liberty

Last fortnight, the New York Times stood behind its new editorial board hire Sarah Jeong, after critics on the right dug up Jeong’s offensive tweets sarcastically mocking white people, saying things like “oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men,” and using a #CancelWhitePeople hashtag.

The Times argued that Jeong’s tweets were a sort of counter-trolling response to sustained harassment she endured as a young Asian-American female technology reporter. Jeong’s critics noted that her offensive tweets weren’t in direct response to any harassment, and that they displayed a degree of hostility to white people that would be considered racist and out of bounds if directed toward any other group. Nonetheless, the Times did not fire her.

This was the right decision. People shouldn’t lose jobs and opportunities over old tweets. But if the New York Times did the right thing here, then, by the same standard, several prominent media companies, including the Times, have made wrong decisions in the recent past.

https://quillette.com/2018/08/13/nobody-should-listen-to-twitter-mobs/ [quillette.com]


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