Thread by @jeffjarvis

So The New York Times writes a screed under the headline, "The Abolition of Privacy." A 🧵
They complain about the institutions killing privacy and about citizens too easily acquiescing. 1/

The Times intones: "People who may in charity be supposed to be sane, and to have some reasonable conception of their right to their own privacy, surrender themselves in apparently helplessness...." 2/

The Times declares that this is "a very unpleasant and discouraging incident in our recent social history, and one for which our people generally should be heartily ashamed." 3/

It scolds: "One's right to one's own privacy is by no means an idle one, or one to be waived with impunity and carelessness.... It is high time the fashion was restored." 4/

You might have guessed, given the language, that this was written sometime ago: August 4, 1874, in fact. What you might not guess is the object of The Times' ire for destroying privacy. That's in the next tweet... 5/

The Times is complaining that newspapers are destroying privacy with the new institution of the interview. 6/

The Times' specific complaint was with coverage of the Henry Ward Beecher scandal.
It teaches us that newspapers attacked privacy long before anything called social media. Call it circ-bait. So let us not be so high-and-mighty or nostalgic in our field. 7/

Thanks to Glenn Wallach in his paper for the link to the Times editorial. 8/ jstor.org/stable/40642947

Another day, class, I will tell you about the parties who held an iron, monopolistic grip on the dissemination of news in the United States and used it for the purpose of political favor. Hint: It wasn't a technology company.