Thread by @jbarro

It's not off limits. Some very loud reporters (often self-appointed "disinformation" czars) have just led a fairly successful campaign to convince people within the industry that criticizing their work is morally wrong.

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1376600261314146313

This beat has been like a brain poison inside newsrooms, making reporters arrogant about criticism at a time when the industry can least afford it.

And the arrogance is structural. If the whole premise of your beat is "people believe wrong things, this is turning our society into a dystopia, I will make people believe the right things" then of course you will end up with an authoritarian attitude when people object.

And yes, Glenn is unpleasant. But his excessive appetite for conflict is a reason he's willing to have fights about this when most people quite reasonably decide it's not worth the trouble.

"Raising this criticism publicly will cause some people to say nasty things on the internet" is an objection that can be levied against *any* online criticism. Note that it applies also to critical coverage of non-journalist subjects in news stories.

I would just find the deep concern over how coverage can cause harassment more genuine if it were not coming from an industry in which so many were, for example, eager to make Nick Sandmann (then a minor) a national villain because they didn't like the look on his face.

There is no principle here at all other than that working journalists with the right ideological commitments should not be criticized and everyone else is fair game.