Thread by @redlianak

Every journalist who has gaslighted Johnny Depp stans by saying they're bots or trolls has contributed to a cycle of abuse. Perhaps not intentionally, but there are real people that are trying to recover from trauma who now feel spat on all over again. Not factual. Not okay.

The media NEVER LEARNS with these online phenomena. Troll farms inflame all sides of these dust ups because they want to make Western democracy look stupid. And the media plays into their hands again and again because, ironically, commentary writers get freaked out by nuance.

The truly awful thing is that the media is still a hotbed of abusive behavior. People I have personally witnessed being abusive say "the right things" and fly the flag and go right back to being abusive. But does media EVER humble despite it BEING PART OF THE PROBLEM? No.

I was bounced out of news radio because 1) I was accused of "feminist bullshit" 2) I refused to report an unconfirmed rumor of sexual abuse in a child murder case because I was concerned about how that would hurt a future jury pool. Justice was more important than the story to me

I was told I did not have the right instincts for news. I was both too soft AND too aggressive. Too "unlikeable" AND too "emotionally attached". And these are the people currently lecturing the public about how to spot abuse and how to be compassionate? SPARE ME.

I have always subscribed to "better to be right than fast" reporting, and that is not the paradigm of news anymore. So mistakes get made, people's lives get ruined, the record is never corrected, and newsrooms believe this is just the cost of doing business. That's normalized now

But TL;DR, it is unreasonable to trust organizations that abuse - and enable and cover up abuse - to accurately and completely report on stories involving abuse. That's just common sense, but sense these days is not common. #DeppVsHeard

Note: many Amber Heard supporters are also legit victims of abuse. They have just not been subjected to being called bots or trolls in the same way as part of a media narrative. It's just not the same order of magnitude there as punny name calling on Twitter.