All the essential tweets you need re: the Ben / Ronan situation (hereafter known as The 2020 Media Man Olympics) (alternate title: The Battle of The Boy Wonders god if only i could a/b test this)
(Was gonna wait until tomorrow to discuss…….but when Christmas comes early to media Twitter, you just can’t wait:)
Okay so just IN CASE you haven’t actually seen it, everyone is talking about Ben Smith’s latest media column from last night, Is Ronan Farrow Too Good to Be True?, and I have compiled the most essential and/or eyebrow-lifting tweets for your enjoyment:
In terms of official-ish responses from The New Yorker side, you have Michael Luo firing back a 16-tweet thread on the specifics of Ben’s specifics (which Ronan RT’d and then added to with 7 tweets of his own here). There’s general defense of The New Yorker’s fact checking honneur, as done by Adam Davidson here and here. Also, Jon Lovett more concisely sums up their side of the beef here, because duh why be in a media power couple if you aren’t going to tweet something spicy in their defense???
Other journo heavyweights who weighed in: Maggie Haberman quotes an interesting lil section, Glenn Greenwald is very into it, Ashley Feinberg makes a point here, and Wesley Lowery spotlights the v. personal side of this whole beef (this one I was like, oooof). If you missed the detail about Matt Lauer in the column, Molly Knight has the best reaction here.
John Carreyou (author of Bad Blood) calls it “rich with irony and quite brazen” especially in terms of the whole issue of “resistance journalism,” especially from the former head of BuzzFeed News (a point that people like John Cook seem to be subtweeting). There are also interesting critiques on the resistance journalism thing from Saeed Jones (check that Roxane Gay reply) and Matthew Yglesias, if you want that.
This tweet I like simply for the phrase “muscular debunking” (it really rolls off the tongue does it not???) and while I truly did not have media dudes calling each other sacred cows on my 2020 vision board, here we are.
Finally, E. Alex Jung is here to save us with the perfect Vulture angle, and Lois Beckett is out here making the most interesting point in general, IMHO. Zack Kopplin also imagines the column paths not taken. Andi Zeisler reminds us to watch the space if the timing of the column also made you sus. Oh, and here’s this one from Alexis Sobel Fitts, with the perfect Jezebel link to finish us out, at least for now.
(thank you to all my friends who have contributed to this “reporting” lol)
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