Thread by @juliaioffe

There’s a reason this resonates for us former foreign correspondents. When I was reporting out of Moscow, we wrestled with the question of objectivity. In the end, we knew: Putin is objectively corrupt, Putin is objectively an authoritarian, Putin objectively was not good. 1/

https://twitter.com/postopinions/status/1347332716564459526

Our editors back home in Washington and NYC agreed—and they ate it up. We wrote stories about “the man to take on Putin,” not the man in the version of the Russian diner who supported Putin. We agreed: the opposition was the good guys, the Kremlin was the bad guys. 2/

Then came Trump and it turned out that the standards we applied to writing about foreign countries had to be toned down to “racially charged” and “not supported by the facts” and both sides. 3/

I won’t even get into the feats of bravery that we expect of foreign journalists, like risking their lives, when so many in #thistown won’t even risk their jobs, but there’s a level of colonialism in America’s newsrooms that we need to address and change. 4/

We need to have one standard of language and morality, regardless of ratings, subscriptions, advertisers, and access. /end