WaPo’s Walter Mitty Gave Me an Idea.
After Threatening to Misrepresent Ron Desantis’s Spokesman, Taylor Lorenz Refuses to Comment.
“Thanks for the quick reply Christina, we'll note that you declined to comment on your relationship with the account unless you'd like to add something further.”
That’s what Washington Post scribbler Taylor Lorenz wrote to Governor Ron DeSantis’s Press Secretary Christina Pushaw immediately after Pushaw had, in fact, responded to Lorenz.
I’m not going to get into the wider Lorenz debacle. Her body of work speaks for itself: odious, garbled, hypocritical, snollygostery. But so is most of the Washington Post, as I was reminded by a recent interaction with their in-house “fact checker.” Spoiler alert: he wasn’t super interested in the facts.
But this particular altercation between Pushaw and Lorenz – on the back of the latter’s doxxing of the ‘Libs of TikTok’ Twitter account – caught my attention. Because it happens way too often.
Effectively ignoring Pushaw’s response, Lorenz told her she would inform the increasingly extreme Washington Post readership that Pushaw refused to comment… because Lorenz didn’t like what she responded with.
I’m reminded of when CNN’s Paula Reid did the exact same thing to Congressman Matt Gaetz and his spokesman. It actually happens routinely.
So, for the purposes of experiment, I decided to ask Lorenz if she had a comment on this episode herself.
Answer came there none.
Now, there’s nothing to say that Lorenz owes me a comment. But you’d think given her propensity to solicit (and then ignore) comments from her subjects, she’d be amenable to providing context for her scurrilous activities. But answer came there none.
Lorenz is a particular egregious case of media elitism and silver spoonery. But less experienced “reporters,” perhaps especially, are now deploying such tactics. Picking up the worst habits of their elders. And apparently, Lorenz is in fact an “elder” in her newsroom.
The Walter Mitty of the WaPo, Lorenz has been listed as a number of different ages over the past few years, but not in any timeline that would make sense. And let’s be honest, whether she’s 35 or 43, it is extremely creepy that her “reporting” effectively centres around kids on TikTok and stalking people she disagrees with on the internet.
But Lorenz herself isn’t the problem, as you’re no doubt aware. She’s a symptom, for sure. But nought but another festering boil on modern journalism. And her duplicitous tactics – including demanding a comment which she then threatened to lie about – is a practice that must be penalised.
Conservatives naturally balk at the idea of any regulation of the press. But look what that mentality has earned us.
Like Hollywood, the financial sector, and government itself, Big Media has demonstrated an unwillingness and inability to regulate itself. Media luvvies pat each other on the back and hand each other awards, just like the people they aspire to be: those in attendance at the Oscars, the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs, the Emmys, the Grammys, the Tonys, and so forth.
Journalism has its own world of self-congratulation and mutual masturbation. The Pulitzers, the Peabodys, the Orwell prize. Lorenz herself won something colorlessly named the “2020 Young Influentials Who Are Shaping Media, Marketing and Tech." They weren’t wrong. Lorenz is shaping media all right, but not for the better. And her behavior raises questions conservatives never like to ask: do we need legislation to fix this?
Establishing a check on duplicitous behavior like this is probably overdue. There’s some case law regarding abuse of corporate monopoly powers, and even fairness in reporting as it pertains to the political arena. But certainly everything is becoming more political, and America must catch up to the media’s wanton destruction and double standards.
I’m not a policy wonk, and critics may justly argue that any such powers would be leveraged by the left to pursue people like me, more than people like Lorenz. Frankly, I welcome such challenges to our reporting, and the kinds of transparency it could unleash via discovery. But most people won’t feel that way. And my own righteous stubbornness isn’t enough to demand what people will invariably describe as “an attack on the First Amendment.”
It’s not an attack on the First Amendment. You can write and publish and say whatever you want. But the public must have an equal First Amendment protection to push back on such fraudulence. American libel laws are currently scarcely sufficient to address this, as President Trump has discussed on numerous occasions.
And anyway, look at what a zero-accountability, oligarch-led corporate media has wrought upon the United States and the Western world. It’s not good, is it? It’s not a system that’s been working. Perhaps some form of consumer-led, ombudsman-style appeals process is required for holding pseudo-reporters, editors, and publishers to account.
I even have the perfect name for it: Taylor’s Law.
Never heard a better description of this slime than "odious, garbled, hypocritical, snollygostery"
ZAP! POW! ZING! Loved every bit of this, Raheem. Thanks!