During the presidential campaign, a lot of journalists learned the hard way that speaking out against Donald Trump was a risky proposition. All too often, whenever a reporter ran a story that was even remotely critical of Trump, he or she was bombarded with threats from alt-right thugs on Twitter. For instance, a reporter for Mic who called out some particularly misogynistic comments by Trump was greeted with graphic insults and death threats.
Well, we could be seeing a return to those days very soon. Two notorious right-wing pseudojournalists told The Daily Caller they are launching projects to target journalists.
Charles C. “Chuck” Johnson of GotNews revealed that he plans to launch his new project sometime around July 4. He told The Daily Caller that it will be a merger of his two existing sites, pseudo-news/trolling site GotNews and crowd-funded doxxing site WeSearchr. His stated goal? Hold journalists accountable.
“The American press no longer behaves properly, and they need to be held to account. They have decided to make themselves the story, and so if anyone has information on top journalists we will make them the story.”
From what we know about Johnson’s history, he’s the last person to be lecturing anyone on how the press should “behave.” For those who don’t recall, Johnson is actually a troll masquerading as a journalist. His idea of journalism resembles what most fair-minded people on both sides of the aisle would call harassment, stalking, and threats.
It got him suspended from Twitter two times in the space of two weeks in October 2014–first for posting the address of a suspected Ebola victim, then for asking for help in finding the boyfriend of a nurse who had been exposed to Ebola. He was suspended for a third time in December 2014 for trying to out the woman who claimed to have been brutally gang-raped at the University of Virginia in 2012.
He finally went too far in May 2015, when he asked for help in “taking out” Black Lives Matter activist Deray McKesson. Twitter suspended him for a fourth time, and soon afterward banned him altogether. It was a move that came several years overdue. Among other things, he posted the home addresses of New York Times reporters without a peep from Twitter. That apparently didn’t dissuade Trump from letting him vet potential hires for his administration.
Given Johnson’s past history, we can probably expect this new project to be more harassment and trolling masquerading as journalism. On WeSearchr, for instance, he posted bounties for Megyn Kelly’s divorce papers, as well as a sex tape of Gawker founder Nick Denton. The only good news is that in all likelihood, it won’t be on Twitter. Johnson has made numerous attempts to restart his personal and GotNews Twitter accounts, only to have them suspended within hours. WeSearchr lost its Twitter account in January when it posted a bounty for the identity of the man who cold-cocked Richard Spencer at the Trump inauguration.
Johnson isn’t the only person who wants to be a loyal soldier in the far-right war on the media. Mike Cernovich of InfoWars is working on a site called “Journalism on Journalists,” which he says will investigate “people making the news and people breaking the news” to determine if they can be trusted.
On paper, his plan seems laudable. He claims that journalists are almost never held to account “if they ruin someone’s life with disinformation.” But then again, you have to consider that he works for InfoWars, one of the most notorious fake news machines in the nation. In the past two months, his boss, Alex Jones, has had to back down from conspiracy theories about Pizzagate and Chobani rather than face business-destroying libel suits.
Even more telling, when Johnson suggested that Cernovich could potentially be involved in his as-yet-unnamed project, Cernovich didn’t rule it out. He said that Journalism on Journalists was his project alone, but it would be “another story” if Johnson wanted to collaborate. So a guy who whines about journalists ruining people’s lives with disinformation is willing to even consider working with a notorious doxxer and cyberstalker. Got it.
Apparently Trumpland doesn’t seem to mind either, based on the reaction from Twitter.
Journalism on Journalists is going to be fun. Like shooting fish in a barrel. The stories will write themselves.
— NTdels4532 (@NTdels4532) May 20, 2017
https://twitter.com/Alexa__Bella/status/865702570182021120
exhibit A as to why now more than ever we need Journalism on Journalists.
— NTdels4532 (@NTdels4532) May 19, 2017
If these deplorables’ idea of journalism looks anything like GotNews, Johnson and Cernovich better have lawyers on speed dial.
(featured image courtesy Johnson’s Facebook)
