Backlash: Right Wing Twitter Begins Digging For Dirt On CNN Employees [Warden]

Over the weekend, the hashtag #CNNDirt popped up in my timeline. I clicked on it and found that a Trump operative named Jack Posobiec had come up with a very simple and cost-free method of digging up dirt on current CNN employees--punch CNN into the search function of Linked In, then sift through the personal Twitter accounts attached to CNN employees' Linked In accounts.

It didn't take him long to find a CNN editor who'd tweeted out rape jokes and comments about how watching the movie, Roots, made him hate white people. The editor quickly locked his account, but the tweets had, of course, been preserved with screen shots.

I'm not going to name the guy here. He's not an on-air personality. But I would like to point out that this is a natural and predictable outcome of the war on privacy and free speech that CNN journalists began when they decided to hunt down a Reddit user and threaten to expose him simply for posting a tweet that poked fun at their organization.

Low level, behind-the-scenes CNN employees now find themselves in exactly the position in which their management and on-air people have put conservative America--one of fear, frustration and worry that anything said on social media that could be construed as offensive will be used mercilessly by partisans to damage their careers and livelihoods.

This is not the world I want to live in. When I first saw that they'd embarrassed this guy, I laughed. I thought he was an on-air personality and at least a minor political player. After I realized he was just an editor, I cringed a little. I can't bring myself to endorse it, but neither can I condemn it. This is what they've done to time and time again us and they won't stop. What alternative is there?

Repeated appeals to reason, principle, and human decency have all been made. All have been in vain. The people who work in the media do not use the power that they wield--a power so great that it can drive every day citizens to suicide--with the care and thoughtfulness of adults.

They are ill-parented toddlers--self absorbed, thoughtless, careless, and happy to break anything that doesn't suit their immediate purpose. These toddlers have found a box of kitchen matches and are busy lighting their sibling's toys on fire out of spite, oblivious to the danger they've created for themselves.

Just as the toddler fails to realize that the fire he's using can also burn him, so, too, does the media overlook that the very techniques they use can be turned upon them, and quite easily.

This is only the beginning of an ever-growing pushback, one that's only going to get nastier and more ugly. And everything that happens is on them. This is the rotten, worm infested harvest they have sown and they're going to be choking on it for some time to come.

posted by Open Blogger at 10:50 AM

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