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The [Freedom of the Press] Will Not Be Abridged
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But if Trump does, welp.
Did we say those things? No, we did not. That would be like holding this dude accountable for everything Steve Huffman ever said.
I think the mainstreaming by this President of violent hate speech is a huge story and in the public interest. Major trends are often reported using individual examples, like the guy the Times keeps interviewing to see if the right has turned on Trump yet rather than exclusively relying on polling data. This guy got into the public eye when the President irresponsibly retweeted him.
Also that shitpost was offensive (against the First Amendment), for the record.
Publishing newsworthy events (which the creation of a meme advocating violence against the media that was co-opted by the President of the United States most assuredly is) falls right under the freedom of the press
Reporting the facts is not in any way analogous to doxxing
One of those things is accurately reporting the 5 W's of a story -- "Who" being the salient W here
The other is publishing as much damaging information on a person as you possibly can, including things like address, phone number, social security number, etc.
It is meant to encourage hostile, bullying action towards an individual (and in some cases has led to suicides), and in many cases is accompanied by, "Here's X person's information, now go make their life a living hell"
Whereas reporting is meant to inform the public
Unless you feel like the media can't report on anything bad anyone ever does because they might be embarrassed, you should be able to recognize the major differences between these actions, the intent behind them, and the methods that go into their implementation
It isn't like CNN went all CSI on Reddit, the guy's profile was practically three or four clicks away from his real identity
The expectation of privacy on the Internet is far beyond the scope of this thread but the takeaway here is if you want to be anonymous, it's not exactly good OPSEC practices to attach your Facebook profile to your Reddit username
tl;dr: Never post anything on the Internet you would be uncomfortable saying openly to real people
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
CNN outing him or not isn't the issue. Their statement declaring his repentance acceptable and so they won't publish so long as he's good is an entirely different thing and not grounded in journalistic ethics at all.
It's probably unethical to threaten him but CNN has a legitimate "we were stupid and explained why we aren't IDing him in a bad way" defense.
Why?
What is in any way activist about it?
The ethical dilemma CNN faced when they learned his identity was - what good comes from telling the world who this horrible guy is? Does it make it a better story? Does it add anything to the context of his comments? Does it help convey the facts better?
And the answer to all the above is no.
Journalism isn't black and white. You wield immense power when you report on anything. When you tell the world something, entire lives, families and communities change. You can bring down governments.
So when you are faced with something like this, you have to decide. In my journalism ethics class we did an exercise debating about suicide. Do you report on a suicide? If it's a lone adult? What if it's the son of someone famous? What if it caused an even bigger accident somehow? You have to balance informing people what's going on in the world with just being a decent human being and not putting people like family members, who did nothing wrong, through pain and suffering for no reason.
How does having a name change anything about this story?
Yeah I think it's important to remember here that news organizations and journalists frequently do make agreements to not reveal names. Which can potentially provide ground for legal action if broken, and would certainly cause a pr disaster. What they did here is simply choose to not publish relevantish information for good reasons.
"reserve the right" just means "hey we didn't agree to shit"
CNN is well within their rights to publish his name regardless of whether he has offered up a mea culpa or not
I read that line as them being gracious and giving him the benefit of the doubt, but if he pops up elsewhere advocating violence towards the media there will be no reason for them to keep his name out of the story anymore
I think the fact that this guy was inciting violence against CNN is getting forgotten in the hubbub here
If somebody threatened me with physical violence I would probably out them immediately, so as far as I'm concerned CNN went above and beyond here
Especially if those factors really did make the actual human beings writing the story and making the decision feel more sympathetic to not publishing the guy's name?
How is the poster's real name relevant to the public? Would that actually improve the story or is it just encouraging people to harass them? A name can often be enough to get an address, phone number, etc.
The story surely should be focused on the president's actions, no? He is the newsworthy individual here
This is all moot because they didn't post his name in the piece
This is some really absurd logic. They clarified that they agreed to not publish his name now based off his pleas but reserve the right to do so if it becomes relevant in any way. Which it might, because he's an adult who behaved as a hateful little shit-stain in such a way that it pleased the President.
It's. It's just not a threat. It's bad writing at the absolute worst. Why make discrediting CNN any easier? The right-wing is doing an admirable job, and CNN is no slouch at embarrassing themselves either, but not because of this, and less so recently than in the (fairly recent) past.
What is the logic that would drive CNN to do this? They extort random trolls now? They get him to wash all their news vans for free forever?
Sorry but when the POTUS uses something anti-1st Amendment you made you are suddenly thrust into the national spotlight
If that thought scares you maybe don't be so publicly anti-1st Amendment?
This is the price we pay for having a free press and a free exchange of ideas
Free speech does not mean freedom from consequences of speech
Also, the private citizen thing is the biggest deal. Almost all racist assholes get exposed by trying to get bigger, run for office or live a public life and this stuff comes up. This guy literally did none of that.
Journalism is facing some really weird challenges.
Unlike, say, a politician making veiled threats to stop legal proceedings against him and his friends.
So it's a little ridiculous to see outrage and claims that this was DEFINITELY a threat from certain circles. I can see how it could be perceived as a threat because there's a huge power imbalance between the two, but CNN deserves the benefit of the doubt since they do not have even the glimmer of a pattern of doing this.
When the President tweets your content, your publicly accessible reddit profile isn't exactly a private thing.
But it's not!
That isn't what happened!
And if it did happen, there would be nothing wrong with that!
I think everyone agrees that it is stupid for CNN to blackmail an internet troll. Most people in this thread seem to agree that's not CNN's actual intent. Unfortunately they worded it in such a way as to make it seem like that to anyone who is inclined to dislike CNN, which is a lot of people. It's not a good look for CNN, regardless of how dumb it actually is. They needed to word that differently to avoid allowing everyone with a grudge to immediately grab it and run the wrong way.
True, but they're a television network.
They're not just going to say his name without putting up his Facebook photo.
I was making a leap to prove a point, but I don't think it's that big of a leap.
"we don't publish names" is also a moral stance. Journalists make ethical decisions all the time. The decision whether or not to publish a name is one of the most frequent ethical questions a journalist encounters.
I put my CNN hate up against anyone on the forum. I consistently say they're more dangerous than Fox, after all. :P
But this story is ridiculous.
Ridiculous or not, it's an easy target for the right. An easy thing to call out and say to people "CNN is trying to blackmail this person because they disagree with CNN." People without the time or inclination to learn the nuance just see this statement CNN put out that comes off as pretty hostile. That's not good. Reddit is awash with this story right now for one, and there's a lot of people saying "not a trump supporter, but this isn't cool CNN" or the equivalent.
Which again gives the President a little more weight when he throws around "fake news" and talks about the tactics of the media.
I am very tired of the left hemming and hawing over how people who are already predisposed to a position are going to dislike how something is phrased
Our side (the side that thinks we should have a free press in this country) has to be absolutely perfect and concerned over how trolls and bigots will interpret our phrasing and, meanwhile, they can openly celebrate a video of the media getting bodyslammed
I am fucking unapologetic about my desire for a free press, and if CNN is making the choice to refrain from publishing this guy's name unless he continues being a shitburger, then that's their prerogative as a member of said press
And I'm pretty much done hand-wringing over how those guys that are inclined to prefer having only national propaganda outlets feel about how CNN constructs sentences explaining the reasoning for their choices about how to exercise their First Amendment rights
But in general joshofalltrades, I agree. I think maybe they should have just published the name instead of this weird statement.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
If the President starts tweeting out far-left shitposts, I am totally not comfortable with NEWS organizations combing through their history and then using said history to doxx them so that they become a target for the alt-right.
Remember Joe the Plumber? Nobody had a problem publishing that guy's real name and shit. Now, in that case, Joe seized upon his fifteen minutes of fame and sank his teeth in, and maybe NaziMemester420 doesn't want to do that. Lots of times when private citizens get the Eye of Sauron of the political press on them, they don't want to do that. Happens all the time.
But somehow, because it's The Internet, it's different? Baloney.
So then we all agree it's for the best that CNN didn't release his name?
Hooray?
What they have to gain is a deterrent for future internet trolls to involve them in such memes. By making it clear that they have the means and the willingness to track down someone who makes such a post, and hold the possibility of an info leak over their heads, it potentially scares others away from doing the same.
What CNN's article says, quite explicitly, is that they could have released his information but they didn't because he apologized. If I'm an internet troll I read that as an unspoken warning that next time they might not be so generous. If the author of that article truly didn't intend it to be taken that way then it was incompetently written, and I don't know why it hasn't been updated by now.
This whole thing is about CNN not even naming the guy, let alone doxxing him.
The inference some are making that the reason they did NOT do that is to coerce the guy into apologizing and behave differently is ludicrous to me.
It's a few steps along the path of global Illuminati media conspiracy.
That's my read on it.
CNN went in expecting a guy who was going to tell them off, be vile and go MAGA all over them.
Instead they got a guy who it sounds like wants nothing to do with this and is terrified.
Then they had to decide how to handle that.
I also fully expect that they're staying in touch with him and hoping he keeps talking about what kind of stuff gets shared and the culture there. My parents don't even know what reddit is. The value of an in depth piece on how it all works and what happens and organized attacks on journalists with an exclusive interview from the guy the president retweeted is a pretty big get.
It will have more people screaming coercion but those screaming made up their minds already.