Surveying the disgraceful condition of our nation’s 21st-century news media, there are times when the question occurs to me, “What would Wes Pruden do?” During the decade I worked as an assistant editor at The Washington Times, I occasionally had the misfortune of angering our esteemed editor-in-chief, who had a low tolerance for errors. Being called on the carpet in Mr. Pruden’s office was an experience one never wished to repeat. As the conservative newspaper in the nation’s capital, our work was always critically scrutinized, and Mr. Pruden enforced high standards to ensure that the news reporting in The Washington Times was always accurate. “Get it first, get it right,” was his motto, and woe be unto he who got it wrong.
Mr. Pruden died three years ago, but his memory lives on, and I have to wonder what he would make of a headline that appeared this week in the Huff Post: “RFK Jr.’s Latest Tweet Is Being Widely Interpreted As A Nazi Dog Whistle.” The key phrase there is “Widely Interpreted,” by which they mean, random people on Twitter are saying stuff.
Where did it come from, this business of turning Twitter content into “news”? The root cause of this phenomenon is probably laziness. Rather than pick up the phone and call some sources about what’s happening in the real world — or, God forbid, leave Mommy’s basement to see for yourself what’s happening — it’s much easier just to cut and paste something you found on the Internet and pretend that this is “reporting.” But I digress. (READ MORE: Section 230: Be Careful What You Wish For)
What was the “dog whistle” transmitted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that was, according to Huff Post’s “sources,” a secret signal of his admiration for the Third Reich? To quote his Tweet in its entirety:
Since the assassination of my father in 1968, candidates for president are provided Secret Service protection. But not me.
Typical turnaround time for pro forma protection requests from presidential candidates is 14-days. After 88-days of no response and after several follow-ups by our campaign, the Biden Administration just denied our request. Secretary Mayorkas: “I have determined that Secret Service protection for Robert F Kennedy Jr. is not warranted at this time.”
Our campaign’s request included a 67-page report from the world’s leading protection firm, detailing unique and well established security and safety risks aside from commonplace death threats.
Does that make you want to blitzkrieg Poland or what? But perhaps you don’t have a Secret Nazi Message Decoder Ring (which various kooks on the Internet seem to possess) and so you missed the Telltale Clue, i.e., the proximity of the number “14” to the number “88.” Indeed, these numbers do have a significance for neo-Nazis, the “14” referring to the notorious “Fourteen Words” creed of terrorist David Lane, and “88” referencing the eighth letter of the alphabet: “HH” = Heil Hitler.
Where did it come from, this business of turning Twitter content into “news”? … it’s much easier just to cut and paste something you found on the Internet and pretend that this is “reporting.”
Could it be that RFK Jr., in his Democrat Party primary campaign against Joe Biden, was intentionally trying to solicit support from Jew-haters with this message on Twitter? Or is it more likely that this numerical juxtaposition was mere coincidence? Because we don’t have Secret Nazi Message Decoder Rings, most people wouldn’t even suspect any hidden meaning in Kennedy’s message, but a “senior reporter” at Huff Post was able to find a half-dozen Random People on Twitter who claimed to have decoded the alleged “dog whistle,” and thus the “Widely Interpreted” headline.
There is a simple Anglo-Saxon word for this kind of journalism, but politeness requires me to describe it as bovine excrement, and it makes me think of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson’s once-famous description of the Kentucky Derby as “decadent and depraved.” (RELATED: Poll: Voters Say Twitter Tilted 2020 Election)
For the record, I’ve emailed Kennedy’s campaign press office seeking comment on the Huff Post smear but don’t expect to hear back from them on a Sunday, if ever. In the meantime, it should be noted that just three days before the alleged secret Nazi message, RFK Jr. held an event with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach and issued a statement:
My lifelong relationship with the Jewish community and support for Israel speaks for itself and I greatly look forward to joining ‘America’s Rabbi’ my friend Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, to address issues of concern to my Jewish brothers and sisters, [July 25] in New York City before a live audience.
At this dangerous time for American and world Jewry, where antisemitism is on the rise across the globe, it is imperative that those seeking the presidency deliver their unambiguous proposals for combatting Jew-hatred and at this communal event no subject will be off limits.
Sorry to disappoint any members of the “Heil Hitler” crowd who might have been misled by the Huff Post into thinking RFK Jr. was their friend. But more importantly, what kind of kooks are running the Huff Post these days, and why do they think what they’re doing is “journalism”? (RELATED: Pulitzer Board Doubles Down on Fake News)
Long ago, the site was The Huffington Post, named for its California socialite founder, Arianna Huffington. In 2011, Huffington managed to sell out to AOL for a reported $315 million. Four years later, Verizon bought AOL and then, in 2021, Verizon offloaded Huff Post to BuzzFeed in a deal whose value was not reported, but which was almost certainly pennies-on-the-dollar of what Huffington sold it for a decade earlier. The best way to convey what Huff Post is now worth is to quote what BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti said in March 2021: Huff Post’s losses totaled around $20 million in 2020, Peretti told employees. “Though BuzzFeed is a profitable company, we don’t have the resources to support another two years of losses,” he said.
Peretti said that in explaining why he was shutting down Huff Post’s Canadian bureau, and laying off dozens of employees. However much Peretti has been able to reduce the losses at Huff Post, it’s almost certainly still losing money while doing bad journalism like this Secret Nazi Message Decoder Ring story about RFK Jr. And bad journalism of this sort is everywhere nowadays.
The Washington Post employs Taylor Lorenz, who specializes in such dreadful nonsense as the April 2022 story, “Meet the woman behind Libs of TikTok, secretly fueling the right’s outrage machine,” which carried this subhead: “A popular Twitter account has morphed into a social media phenomenon, spreading anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment and shaping public discourse.” (READ MORE: Social Media Makes You Stupid)
What do those words mean? Who is “the right,” what is their “outrage,” and how was the Twitter account @LIbsOfTikTok “fueling” it? Also, while we’re inquiring about definitions, what does the phrase “anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment” mean, and at what point does a Twitter account become popular enough to be called “a social media phenomenon”?
Maybe in the world of Taylor Lorenz, the meaning of these phrases is self-evident, as is the newsworthiness of such a story. Most Americans however, are not obsessed with Twitter, and couldn’t fathom why the editors of the Washington Post would assign someone to write a 2,000-word “news” article about it.
TWO THOUSAND WORDS? Once upon a time in journalism, an article of such length — more than three full columns of a standard newspaper page — was a rarity, reserved for the most urgent topics. Maybe the Washington Post in 1968 would have devoted 2,000 words in their Sunday edition to recounting recent developments in the Tet Offensive, but other than such world-historic events, news stories generally ran somewhere in the range of 500 to 750 words. And what was the world-historic significance of @LibsOfTikTok? To quote Taylor Lorenz:
The anonymous account’s impact is deep and far-reaching. Its content is amplified by high-profile media figures, politicians and right-wing influencers. Its tweets reach millions, with influence spreading far beyond its more than 648,000 Twitter followers. Libs of TikTok has become an agenda-setter in right-wing online discourse, and the content it surfaces shows a direct correlation with the recent push in legislation and rhetoric directly targeting the LGBTQ+ community.
Such was the justification the Washington Post offered for “doxxing” the person behind the account, a Brooklyn lady named Chaya Raichik, in a 2,000-word article that included quotes from an ACLU officials accusing Raichik of inciting “a deep sense of paranoia” which “inspires a vigilante spirit.” All of this, you see, because Raichik had the simple idea of reposting to Twitter video clips of what liberals were saying on TikTok. And this was why the editors of the Washington Post felt justified in their Tet Offensive coverage of a Twitter account.
Perhaps the reader will not be surprised to learn that the Washington Post is projected to lose as much as $100 million dollars this year. It’s almost enough to make you suspect that people don’t want to pay money for the privilege of reading 2,000-word articles about “right-wing” Twitter accounts.
Meanwhile, there’s this Huff Post article about RFK Jr.’s alleged Nazi “dog whistle,” which made me think of my old boss, Wes Pruden. I was trying to imagine what would happen if someone walked into Mr. Pruden’s office and tried to pitch him on a story like that: “Hey, these people on Twitter are saying Bobby Kennedy’s kid is a secret Nazi sympathizer, and we want to do a story treating this as Serious News.”
Wes Pruden would have fired them on the spot and kicked them down the stairs, not necessarily in that order.
Excuse me if I’m a bit nostalgic for the Good Old Days. Maybe this will inspire Taylor Lorenz to write a 2,000-word article exposing me as an “advocate of newsroom violence.” There’s no such thing as bad publicity, they say, and last time I checked, @LibsOfTikTok had 2.3 million followers and, unlike the Washington Post, Chaya Raichik isn’t losing $100 million a year.
