"Would so many outlets really reprint claims so obviously false, knowing that repetition, even in the process of rebuttal, was what made the lies linger?"

I'm reminded of a 2018 Wash. U. journalism panel where a naive or craven producer said shoe-leather reporting would save us. https://twitter.com/sarahkendzior/status/1246893166923522048

I remember why I was so mad, hearing that naive or craven take from a panelist that traditional journalistic values would still save us—I'd recently heard @zephoria speak on digital martyrs and how people get media to "negate the frame" to fill data voids. http://lil.b27.org/ztrlm 

I remember wanting to tell the journalists on the panel about data voids—but feeling a deep sense of despair and wanting to be anywhere but there. I remember the next day's gala, full of writers and photographers, when only a couple of us went out to photograph an amazing sunset.

That was also the night a whole bunch of us women alums of the college newspaper started talking at the gala and came to the realization we'd all been groped or in some other way sexually harassed by the same prominent white male alum, who's better-known than most of us combined.

I haven't thought about that week in a long time. But it wasn't that long ago and it was a microcosm of everything in the news—everything I'm reading in @sarahkendzior's book. I never felt comfortable befriending administrators in the halls of privilege, never cared about access.

The people at that gala who had made it had largely done so through access journalism, through being privileged to be in the room with powerful people. Whereas many of us in the room who were no longer journalists were millennials who began our careers in the shadow of recession.

Those are generalizations, of course, because there were also millennials who'd "made it." My memory is that many of them did so by pledging oaths of fealty to traditional journalistic values and credentialism—by getting that Mizzou master's degree and/or doing three internships.

For what it's worth, and maybe it's worth a lot: The craven or naive producer I mentioned in this thread? Yeah, that was George Stephanopoulos' former executive producer and ABC News' Washington bureau chief. It was off the record but seems important now. https://mobile.twitter.com/joncoopertweets/status/1306083830567251968

So Jon and company: Are you gonna get it together and hold the president accountable on behalf of the American people—or will you hold onto that access and immense privilege you now have, your D.C. home and your Manhattan penthouse, until there no longer is a democracy to defend?

Truly, I'm shaking over here. I take ethics seriously. But to realize the fate of our democracy might ride on decisions made by my peers from the college days, thirtysomething CEOs of social media companies and VPs of media companies, that's terrifying enough to break my silence.