Study Hall Digest 7/29/2019

By Study Hall staff writer Allegra Hobbs (@allegraehobbs)

NPR decided to capitulate to right wing outrage when it severed ties with longtime freelance contributor Kim Kelly. Kelly tweeted Friday that the organization had ended its relationship with her due to her “activist stance,” which they said conflicted with their journalistic ethics. That’s not too surprising. NPR, which is (partially) publicly funded, touts “impartiality” as one of its core values in its ethics handbook, which explicitly demands that its writers “do not advocate” Kelly is an avowed anarchist and labor organizer who created an anti-fascist metal festival earlier this year and writes openly about her politics.

But Kelly has been contributing to NPR Music since 2011, and she didn’t develop an activist stance just now. So what changed to make NPR cut her off? Two weeks ago, Tucker Carlson blasted Kelly on his show, highlighting her tweet in support of Willem Van Spronsen, the anarchist who was killed by police after throwing “incendiary devices” at vehicles and buildings outside an ICE detention facility in Washington. During the segment, Carlson identified her as a Teen Vogue writer, but gave a shout out to NPR at the end.

“He was going on about how I was inciting terrorism and freaking out about me being a writer at Teen Vogue, and at the end he said, ‘Also she writes for NPR, so your tax dollars are funding this,’” said Kelly. The segment led to a right-wing backlash and a petition calling on Teen Vogue to dismiss her.

Kelly barely contributes to NPR, she said — she last had a piece published there in 2017. They had reached out to her months ago, asking her to draft a pre-written obituary for an aging rock star, and she’d taken the assignment.

But Friday morning she was asked to jump on a call with a senior director at the organization, who explained they were cutting ties — that director admitted the Carlson segment had brought the issue of Kelly’s activism to their attention, but it was ultimately a matter of following the rules. “She said, ‘You’re very clearly an activist and that conflicts with our ethics,’” said Kelly. “I said, ‘Good luck finding somebody in 2019 who doesn’t have a political opinion.’” The piece NPR had assigned her months earlier was killed.

NPR’s decision comes at a time when news organizations are grappling with old journalistic standards of objectivity (see: the debate around whether to call the president’s racist tweets “racist”…NPR says no) and journalists are grappling with how much to disclose when it comes to their own political and moral convictions. NBC’s senior media reporter Dylan Byers penned a contested piece last year arguing journalists should stay away from Twitter, lest they reveal a bias. (Of course, the whole concept of being unbiased is bullshit — reporters who claim to be unbiased are just concealing their biases, and it’s hard to see how that concealment makes for a more honest and transparent press).

This is further complicated by the fact that some journalists benefit from building an online personal brand around expressing their opinions. That could certainly be said of Kelly, whose continued work for Teen Vogue is informed by her activist stance.

“The lines keep shifting in terms of what is professional and what is acceptable and what is not,” said Kelly. “If I was smarter I would probably tone down my social media presence but I’m really stubborn and I don’t want to, so I’m going to see how that works out. Behaving myself has never worked out. Being an irritating thorn in the side of a lot of people with bad ideas has been my bread and butter.”

Stay tuned for a piece from Study Hall on the pressures facing freelancers to censor themselves on social media.

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Remember when Amazon’s PR team and Quillette joined forces to stand up for billionaire Jeff Bezos while his workers went on strike? What a time to be alive! While workers were striking to protest warehouse conditions on Amazon Prime Day, Quillette, the website that loves race science and very long essays about missionary sex, ran a piece by an Amazon warehouse worker defending the company’s treatment of its workers. The account is deeply depressing: Even if workers were required to keep working around the corpse of a fallen colleague, he argues, that’s not evidence working conditions are bad! And chanting Prime Day slogans is nice! (There is also an extremely long segment dedicated to the incredible diversity of the warehouse workers, including an aside from the narrator about how he was apprehensive about giving a ride to a colleague who lives in public housing because he’d seen “The Wire.”) Anyway, you know who really liked the piece?

You know you’re doing something right when the PR side of a massive multi-billion dollar corporation known for poor labor conditions tweets out your coverage of them!

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The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer dove into the accusations against Al Franken that led to the senator’s (voluntary) resignation. Really just one accusation, though — the one from Leeann Tweeden that led to six other women to come forward with similar stories. The piece has been criticized for focusing almost exclusively on the holes in the Tweeden account, glossing over the others, and for very clearly being an Al Franken redemption vehicle designed to show how the former senator was wrong, replete with anecdotes about how he’s clumsy and awkward but not predatory (he kisses women on the mouth as a greeting, but that’s just a “New York kiss,” it’s FINE).

Anna Merlan at Jezebel took issue with Mayer’s characterization of her reporting on one of Franken’s accusers, including the claim other outlets had passed on the story because it was “too weak.” Merlan’s piece also includes what I would call an alarmingly terse email sent by Mayer to the accuser, who was concerned when she found the New Yorker was planning to print her name.

“I don’t believe Mayer’s Franken piece would pass muster if it wasn’t about Franken or by Mayer,” wrote Danielle Tcholakian at The Daily Beast. “Few others could get away with giving or getting this kind of coverage.”

Longread of the Week: Molly Fischer at The Cut went long on the controversial phenomenon of “chronic Lyme,” a condition not recognized by the medical establishment, though many purported sufferers vehemently argue for its legitimacy. There are some…alarming comments from “Lyme literate” doctors who hand out long-term prescriptions for antibiotics for a wide array of symptoms (like depression and anxiety) they claim indicate the presence of Lyme. But the piece is deeply empathetic and fair, recognizing the pain of those who claim to suffer from chronic Lyme and the ways in which the medical establishment can fail sufferers.

EVERYTHING ELSE

— “Yo, proletariat”: The call to stop criticizing Maureen Dowd’s fancy cocktail parties heard ‘round the world (or, at least Media Twitter). Dowd dedicated an entire column to complaining that leftists on Twitter called her an elite (which she is), and couldn’t help but use some guillotine imagery in the process, because that’s the New York Times Opinion Section way! This is absolutely a good use of space in the paper of record!

— Huffington Post published a deep dive on the fall of Mic, which flew too close to the sun, leaned too heavily on Facebook, and was ultimately gutted and sold to Bustle Digital Group (like everything else). “Journalistic institutions need to be institutions. They need to be able to grow in a healthy and steady way,” a former Mic editor told the Huffington Post. “When I think about things that grow that wildly and that successfully, I don’t think of a media company ― I think of cancer.”

— Deadspin workers were alarmed to see a reader feedback survey, which asks readers to select which of a series of criteria they like LEAST about the site. When the editorial team didn’t get an answer from management about the purpose of the survey, which seems clearly designed to question the editorial value of the site, the Gizmodo Media Group Union tweeted it out. (Read more about Gizmodo staff’s ongoing conflict with the new CEO here.)

— Taffy Brodesser-Akner wrote about life/work balance for Real Simple. Basically: It’s overrated! Do everything! Don’t deep breathe your way to mental serenity! Keep working! I mean, she’s being honest about how she maintains the level of productivity she’s known for and she’s honest about the cost of that productivity in her personal life. Whether or not you should take a page out of her book probably just depends on what your individual goals are and what you value.

— Here’s an exciting bit of word salad: “Newsday is transforming from a traditional newspaper into a leading-edge multimedia and multi-platform content generation machine, with expanded video, exciting live events and experiences for subscribers.” That’s from a spokesperson for Newsday, which is offering voluntary buyouts to its roughly 300 employees, apparently in preparation for a pivot to video and…exciting live events.