1. I won't quibble with @benyt finding cases of excess and unfairness in Ronan Farrow's reporting - it was a solid, well-reported piece - but I do worry (and maybe I'm alone in this) about the overall context. I've worked with a lot of investigative reporters over 40 years and...
2. ...I can tell you that the great ones are usually out there, pushing boundaries and, yeah, maybe sometimes taking it a little too far. In Farrow's case, the documentation of mistakes should be balanced against the overall thrust of his work. Farrow pushed back against a....
3. ...cover-up mentality at NBC News, which not only eventually advanced the Harvey Weinstein story (adding to amazing work of NYT's Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor) but exposed much deeper problems that led to ouster of boss Andy Lack. That efforts was aggressive, fearless and...
4. in 2020 we need a lot more of that approach. Ben Smith claims there's something called "resistance journalism" (???) that has a problem when the issue I'm seeing in the Trump era is not enough resistance and too much fall-back on the old journalism tropes when America is...
5. ...on the brink of collapse. So, yeah -- Ronan Farrow should dot his i's and cross his t's...well done, Ben. But let's not allow a story like this distract us from the fearless, risk-taking take-no-prisoners journalism we need in 2020. If "resistance journalism" exists, then..
6. ...let's have more of it, not less - 30 -
