The Washington Post Fired Me – But My Voice Will Not Be Silenced

https://karenattiah.substack.com/p/the-washington-post-fired-me-but

by frob • 10 months ago

38 27 10 months ago

karenattiah.substack.com

One question I have about politics and history, is does politics tend to follow short term events or long term trends. If politics tends to follow short term events then one might tend to assume that a swap of attitude from cancel culture on then left to cancel culture on the right would face immediate backlash, since a sense of cultural overreach and extremism was given as an explanation for Trump, that Trump was a moderating force in society.

I tend to think that long-term trends tends to be a better explanatory factor. There was this interview with this divorce lawyer that really helped shape my view on where we were as a society which basically said we’re in a place with too much post-modernism. The idea of how we imagine the world is just too flexible, there’s too much “freedom” and we’re on a trend back towards a more concrete view of the world. I tend to think this is correct, and that if there is backlash to Trump, or the public and popular notion of conservatism, we’re still, broadly speaking influenced by a group of folks who are ready for a more concrete or “conservative” popular culture. Gender roles, Right and wrong.

But I also think the trend sort of definitionally is already moving back in the other direction, it will just take ~ 10 years to play out as those in their formative years grow into a more liberal mindset(it’s probably just sort of barely impacting a few months of the psyche of the youngest pre-teens now and as that cohort ages they’ll influence the culture back in the other direction)

techpineapple2• 10 months ago

I do wonder though how much freedom plays into this dynamic. Are young North Koreans “liberal” as much as they’re allowed to be, or does a stranglehold on cultural influences somehow squash organic contrarianism.

righthand• 10 months ago

I am hoping ex-WaPo writers can start a new publication and push WaPo down in value. This happened to the local Nyc blog during Trump’s first term. Wnyc was not supporting the writers if Gothamist so the staff up and left and started Hellgate.nyc with a different take on modern journalism. It has been a big win for those writers and local coverage.

We really need to replace these corrupted institutions and at least boost our freedom of choice back up. Nothing needs to be a complete mega-hit 1:1 replacement in the world of news IMO.

alpha_squared• 10 months ago

From what I'm gathering, the quote she attributes to Kirk appears to not be a statement he made. I'm not able to find a source for that quote anywhere, but I'm also not about to go watch/listen to everything Kirk ever said in case it was never transcribed anywhere. If it is true that Kirk never said that, I would say that definitely compromises the trust in her as a journalist.

And I'm saying this as someone who is on the "political left" by US standards, though more centrist by broader western standards.

muddi9006• 10 months ago

There is nothing uncharacteristic about statement. This is something similar he said about black people.

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1ZPr6KwnzA/

The benefit of the doubt should go to the author. Why are we pretending that he was not this?

IAmBroom• 10 months ago

Why should any side get the benefit of the doubt?

orionsbelt3• 10 months ago

His point is not that black people are less capable but that DEI policies causing looser standards causes people to question whether a particular black person they encounter in a role is sufficiently qualified given those well known looser standards, and that this is bad for everyone, black people included. You can argue he’s still wrong, but it’s quite clear from the various clips that this is what he is arguing. In another clip, for example, he cited United’s goal of having 50% of pilots being of color or women, as compared to 13% of the population being black and women having less of an interest in careers like being a pilot; ie he has no prejudice against black peoples capabilities but has an issue with lowering hiring standards for any group of people.

hackeraccount• 10 months ago

Embarrassingly, I've read the details on the quote. The short version is that Kirk said something about several individuals which was changed in the "quote" to be about a group.

The paraphrase would be if I said, my co-works Bob and John were congenital idiots and I was quoted as saying "All Unix Administrators are congenital idiots"

Should she get fired for that kind of thing? Easily yes if she did it in a work product.

If she did it for something outside of work? I have no idea. Probably not but nominally she was doing straight news for the Washington Post. The deeper problem is the no one goes into Journalism to do straight news reporting but everyone at least starts off doing that and for most that's all they ever do - but everyone wants the dream; getting paid to tell other people what they think is right and wrong with the world. The only way to get that dream job is to start off doing it for free but it's not hard to see how that might conflict with your day job if your day job is straight news reporting.

mcphage• 10 months ago

The source seems to be this: https://x.com/patriottakes/status/1679829904026730496?s=20

yakz• 10 months ago

It's not an exact quote, but it was on The Charlie Kirk Show, on July 13th 2023. The video is still available, it's around 53:45 in.

alkyon• 10 months ago

Here you have it: https://twitter.com/i/status/1965931096539017536

The late Mr. Kirk was seriously messed up.

tim333• 10 months ago

Meh. The text quote is not what Kirk says. I hate that style of trying to win an argument by lying about what they said.

The Washington Post Fired Me – But My Voice Will Not Be Silenced

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