{"id":176555,"date":"2020-05-18T18:15:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-18T23:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/05\/18\/ok-this-is-wierd\/"},"modified":"2020-05-18T18:15:00","modified_gmt":"2020-05-18T23:15:00","slug":"ok-this-is-wierd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/05\/18\/ok-this-is-wierd\/","title":{"rendered":"OK, This is Wierd"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ben Smith of The New York Times<\/i> has just come out with a an article excoriating Ronan Farrow<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The thing is, there is not a whole bunch of “There” there.<\/p>\n

Smith suggests that Farrow sees himself as a crusading reporter with an attitude, rather than an ideology free automaton, something which Farrow freely admits, so this is not what one would call a big reveal. <\/p>\n

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I\u2019ll be honest, my first reaction to NYT publishing a bizarre hit piece on Ronan Farrow is that he\u2019s working on something they want to preemptively discredit.<\/div>\n

\u2014 Shannon \ud83e\ude78\ud83e\uddb7 (@TheStagmania) May 18, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The question is why, and why now?<\/div>\n

I think that there are a number of reasons that this story might have run.<\/p>\n

The most banal reason for this would be that the priesthood at the The New York Times<\/i> is simply offended by Farrow’s success and notoriety for what they would see as garbage journalism.<\/p>\n

They are the “Karens” of journalism, and this is a profoundly “Karen” moment for them. <\/p>\n

While this is a behavior that is typical of the Times<\/i> hive mind, it does not typically end up in the news section.  It typically ends up in the the snark sections, OP\/ED or media criticism, and not in news.<\/p>\n

A more laudable, but by no means laudable, motivation might they want to throw Farrow off of his stride because they have a competing scoop, and they want to get there first, so they pulled this out of their back pocket.  (A stick in his bicycle spokes, so to speak.)<\/p>\n

Not nice, but journalism ain’t tiddly winks.<\/p>\n

Assuming this is not a product of the two above scenarios, then we need to go a little bit tinfoil hat, and conclude that they have gotten word of a story that they (whoever “they” are) never want to see the light of day.<\/p>\n

I don’t buy this, but if it is either hyper competitive journalism or a conspiracy theory, then the likely stories would cover 3 general areas:<\/p>\n