It’s different when they do it!
Robby Soave at Reason writes:
The Washington Post has accused billionaire Elon Musk, who is set to acquire Twitter for $44 billion, of “targeting” the company’s employees for harassment.
In actuality, all Musk did was offer some entirely valid criticisms of a specific, high-level employee: Vijaya Gadde, a top executive at Twitter and someone Politico once described as “the most important Silicon Valley executive you’ve never heard of.” And if criticizing someone on Twitter is equivalent to harassing them, has The Washington Post not committed the exact same crime?
The Post‘s confused and contradictory reporting on this issue notes that Saagar Enjeti, co-host of the podcast Breaking Points, named Gadde as Twitter’s “top censorship advocate” for her integral role in the company’s decisions to suspend former President Donald Trump’s account, and more infamously, to prevent users from sharing The New York Post‘s Hunter Biden story.
Musk replied to Enjeti’s tweet with this comment: “Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate.”
Not only is Musk absolutely correct that muzzling the Hunter Biden story was a bad decision: Twitter actually agrees that it was a bad decision. Former CEO Jack Dorsey has described that action as a “total mistake” and repeatedly apologized for it. He clearly regrets working to suppress the story.
There’s really no headline here. If there is a headline, it should probably be: Elon Musk Agrees With Twitter That Censoring the Hunter Biden Story Was Wrong.
Yet here’s how The Washington Post headlined this revelation: “Elon Musk boosts criticism of Twitter executives, prompting online attacks.”
Basically it is a nonsense story.
But taken to its logical conclusion, isn’t Dwoskin’s article doing the same thing? After all, she is directing criticism—legitimate in her view, but criticism nonetheless—at Enjeti and Musk. She “mentioned” them, to use her own terminology. No doubt this will produce some angry denunciations; Musk is currently receiving both hearty praise and relentless demonization as a result of his Twitter purchase. If Musk is “targeting” Gadde for harassment, what is the best way to describe a Washington Post article that wrongly maligns him? Isn’t Dwoskin “targeting” Musk?
If Dwoskin and the Post reject that analogy, this is what they are saying: when the media industry holds people to account, it’s noble and justified; but when people outside media hold people to account, it’s an act of targeted harassment. The media then insist these acts of targeted harassment (as they define it) are newsworthy, and the cycle repeats itself.
I think that nails it.