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Jeff Jarvis Profile picture
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8 Jan, 4 tweets, 1 min read
Well, here's a story for J-school ethics classes: how Sheehan lied to and broke agreements with his source, Daniel Ellsberg. (This story needs comment from Ellsberg.)
Now It Can Be Told: How Neil Sheehan Got the Pentagon Papers nytimes.com/2021/01/07/us/…
The ethical question to be explored is the obligation journalists have to sources and their control of material, especially when that material could put them in prison. This story should be viewed in the context of Snowden, Wikileaks, Reality Winner.
The other uncomfortable thing revealed in this story is that another @nytimes reporter had an excerpt of the Pentagon Papers from Ellsberg but "had chosen not to mention the bombshell to anyone at the newspaper, preferring to keep it for a book he was writing about the war."
One more: The story reveals Sheehan's opposition the Vietnam War. I'm fine with that. Objectivity is a myth. But it is a myth which The Times still holds dear.

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More from @jeffjarvis

Jeff Jarvis Profile picture
10 Jan
Watching right now. My Rep, @Malinowski, begins by recounting Jan. 6.
Yow. @Malinowski came to the Capitol to thank police there. One said he is also in the Army National Guard and that men in his unit this week said they thought Jan. 6 was "a fake."
.@Malinsowski said the mistake is too common in history: not believing people will do what they say they will do.
Read 17 tweets
Jeff Jarvis Profile picture
1 Jan
As ever, a wise thread from @jayrosen_nyu. But I'll argue a few more factors:
1. The role of media in amplifying bad groups & bad people (Trump was no Twitter genius, as Jay's said; he was good at using Twitter to manipulate media; Q appeared in media bigger than it was)...
2. Social media still allows so many good groups to assemble and act--#BLM first on a long list--and that was necessary because media had not given these communities voice & because media still give them less attention than the bad groups, because that's how media define "news."
3. I'm not seeking false balance. But I am seeking balance in media's flip-flop to its dystopic moral panic techlash. Media choose to amplify bad actors over good and dismiss the public's ability to discern the difference: mass 3rd-person effect.
Read 5 tweets
Jeff Jarvis Profile picture
26 Oct 20
Rereading Arendt is so instructive right now. SS men "were not interested in 'everyday problems' but only 'in ideological questions.'" Nevermind that grandma is dying of COVID and my kids can't get jobs, they're gonna fight for guns and abortions!
Arendt on followers' "radical loss of self-interest, cynical or bored indifference in the face of death [COVID] or other personal catastrophes [unemployment], the passionate inclination toward the most abstract notions as guides for life [guns über alles]..."
"...and the general contempt for even the most obvious rules of common sense." Sounds familiar, eh? She called this the mass. We call this the base.
Read 13 tweets
Jeff Jarvis Profile picture
7 Oct 20
Ad executive I used to respect just blocked me after I criticized him for wanting to block the voices on social media. These are the people who decide what media and what voices in social media get their support and do not. Looking for people who are too powefful? Start there.
I sat in a room with other ad execs who, with enough wine, admitted they don't want to be anywhere near news and don't care about supporting it. The only reason they care about news is their stock prices, they said. This is how they use their financial power.
What ruined the internet? The attention-based, advertiser-paid business model imported from mass media. Looking for whom to blame for a worsened net? Follow the fucking money. It will lead you back to advertisers.
Read 11 tweets
Jeff Jarvis Profile picture
18 Sep 20
At #OxfordLibrary700, the NYT's Mark Thompson connects journalism and libraries as the late James Carey did: "in the wake of conversation we have need not only of the press but also of the library."
Thompson says when he arrived the digital transition at The Times was stalled and marginalized. "Digital people were the most frustrated people in the building." #OxfordLibrary700
The issue of how to make digital central is core to why so many legacy news organizations are stuck and overtaken by insurgents, says Mark Thompson. #OxfordLibrary700
Read 18 tweets
Jeff Jarvis Profile picture
30 Aug 20
The virus (and fights against masks and vaccines) are merely McGuffins, props in the crazy right's anti-intellectual effort to own the libs, the experts, institutions, authority: anger for its own feel-good sake. Tighting them over masks falls into their trap, misses the point.
How then to design journalism to counteract emotions and psychoses, not misinformation? That is the challenge. It starts not with fact-checkers but with shrinks and cognitive scientists.
If you reach for smelling salts over Germans "believing" Qanon you miss the point: It's not about believing that shit but about them saying "we" (uneducated white people) hate "you" (others and their allies). The only known solution: education. Does journalism have a role?
Read 17 tweets

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