High-res Dear New York Times: Do not play this game. You only legitimize this James O’Keefe bullshit when you allow yourself to be draw into a discussion of whether Clay Shirky ever did any sort of work for the TImes.  Because that’s entirely irrelevant. If Jill Abramson herself was starring in this video it wouldn’t matter, because even in the obviously out of context and selective way that this has been edited, there’s absolutely nothing wrong said here. “We are media elites”—yes, and? NPR benefits from certain tax structures? This is not news, and honestly, they’d probably be better off under a more conventional model anyway where fuckheads like James O’Keefe couldn’t extort them. The New York Times has institutional biases? Yes, and there’s no Santa Claus either.  There is no right answer here, because O’Keefe is not a journalist, he’s a propagandist, and the only way to win this is not to play. There is nothing the Times can say that won’t be twisted, and they shouldn’t even try. 

Dear New York Times: Do not play this game. You only legitimize this James O’Keefe bullshit when you allow yourself to be draw into a discussion of whether Clay Shirky ever did any sort of work for the TImes. 

Because that’s entirely irrelevant. If Jill Abramson herself was starring in this video it wouldn’t matter, because even in the obviously out of context and selective way that this has been edited, there’s absolutely nothing wrong said here. “We are media elites”—yes, and? NPR benefits from certain tax structures? This is not news, and honestly, they’d probably be better off under a more conventional model anyway where fuckheads like James O’Keefe couldn’t extort them. The New York Times has institutional biases? Yes, and there’s no Santa Claus either. 

There is no right answer here, because O’Keefe is not a journalist, he’s a propagandist, and the only way to win this is not to play. There is nothing the Times can say that won’t be twisted, and they shouldn’t even try. 

Notes

  1. bmichael said: Dude, huzzah. You make tumblr the reasonably good entity it seems to be.
  2. joshsternberg reblogged this from markcoatney
  3. youngmanhattanite said: What are YOUR social media goals?
  4. meredithbklyn said: mediamatters.org/researc…
  5. sonicbloom11 reblogged this from markcoatney and added:
    You’d think with past experiences with...people would have learned
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