One aspect of the Reply All controversy illustrates an emerging norm in some quarters of journalism and public discourse that goes something like this (I'm trying to understand it so this is tentative, do correct me if you think I've got it wrong):
It is seen as virtuous to produce journalistic work against racism/sexism/homophobia/transphobia, and for social justice... so it is unethical/hypocritical to produce such work if you have a less than perfect record with respect to the ill you are inveighing against
Because you're accumulating an unearned perception of virtue and/or triggering those you've harmed. It is bad quite separate from and in addition to whatever your initial shortcoming, and should be policed to prevent bad actors from getting unearned virtue points.
If I have that right, counter perspectives would be: 1) those are perverse incentives given the stipulated judgments about what is virtuous 2) journalists should be judged on the work itself, as published, not their purity or motives, as we serve the public, not each other
If I ran the Columbia Jouralism Review I'd commission an article and a debate on this!
(But maybe I have the description wrong? Eager for your thoughts.)
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