First, I don't believe that "cancel culture" exists. There is no systemic problem of people being fired because their ideas are too radical. People generally get fired because they say something bigoted or do something that's fire-able anyway. This is a separate problem:

There is a problem of institutions that treating Internet commenters as if the customer is always right, and everyone is a customer. I think it partly has to do with viewing news as more of a consumer product than something that has a public service element.
And employers need to know how to differentiate between bad faith critiques and legitimate concerns, & use (godforbid) critical thinking skills to separate the two. They need to consider the complaints on their own merits, & in the context of the employee's work and known intent
Just to use an example; someone my TL compared Will Wilkinson's firing to James Damore's, as if either of those cases were about radical ideas. I find what Damore was advancing despicable, but from a corporate perspective, he was also a walking gender discrimination lawsuit.
There were multiple reasons to fire Damore, and at least one that was rooted in sheer practicality. Wilkinson and Wolfe's firings were both predicated upon taking the critiques of bad faith Internet commenters at face value, as if they were meaningful and sincere.
As if the customer is always right. And in Wolfe's case, you also had to read into her comment. For some people seeing Biden's plane land might produce and emotional effect because it's a historic moment, not because you're partisanly swooning over Biden.
But even if she had been expressing relief that Trump was out of office (which many Republicans are happy about too), it's not very different from things her more powerful colleagues have said on Twitter. She got fired because she's lower in the hierarchy.
If the Times is going to have a policy that none of its reporters can express a personal opinion about current events or display any emotion, it needs to be equally applied. And have the politics desk would have been fired by now if it had been.
I also think that kind of policy would be stupid, and impossible to enforce. Contrary to the bad faith critiques, these things do not remove or cover up bias. Opinions are something everyone has and they're a product of critical thinking.
American journalism has really undermined itself by using language that implies that journalistic objectivity is the same as neutrality, and non-thinking reporting of empirical facts in some kind of arbitrary format.
Every reporter has opinions because every human does. Every reporter has some kind of partisan leanings because they have opinions about the parties too. Journalistic objectivity should really be called journalistic remove, which is more accurate.
No human is capable of objectivity, in the way that bad faith critics allege is the goal, because no one is omniscient. "Journalistic objectivity" is about not letting opinions get in the way of seeing what the truth is and reporting it.
And a lot of people don't understand this because media literacy is terrible, but also because "objectivity" is entirely the wrong word and news execs keep stupidly using it. And just to come back to a point: Wolfe's firing was about her lack of power at the Times, not her bias.

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One of the authors of the Policy Exchange report on academic free speech thinks it is "ridiculous" to expect him to accurately portray an incident at Cardiff University in his study, both in the reporting and in a question put to a student sample.


Here is the incident Kaufmann incorporated into his study, as told by a Cardiff professor who was there. As you can see, the incident involved the university intervening to *uphold* free speech principles:


Here is the first mention of the Greer at Cardiff incident in Kaufmann's report. It refers to the "concrete case" of the "no-platforming of Germaine Greer". Any reasonable reader would assume that refers to an incident of no-platforming instead of its opposite.


Here is the next mention of Greer in the report. The text asks whether the University "should have overruled protestors" and "stepped in...and guaranteed Greer the right to speak". Again the strong implication is that this did not happen and Greer was "no platformed".


The authors could easily have added a footnote at this point explaining what actually happened in Cardiff. They did not.
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David Baddiel is getting lots of coverage and feedback on his book which again focuses on so called 'left wing' antisemitism.

I will start by saying that I have seen antisemitic comments made by Labour members and some genuine cases.

However, I have huge concerns.


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Let's look in detail at this article written in April 2019 in the @Guardian - and I will explain the concerns.

The areas highlighted guide you to believe this was all Labour - IT WASN'T.

It also occurred before 2015! Detail follows...

https://t.co/cK59FP83aG


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So as you see the writer of this rather deceitful piece starts with

"THAT CHANGED IN SEPTEMBER 2015" 🙄

This was done to point the timeframe as Corbyn's leadership. Yet the article goes on to describe things that are not even related to Labour, which occurred in 2014.


4/x

So... What in fact the @Guardian writer is discussing here is this case - where a group of Neo-Nazi's spent months inflicting abuse on Jewish MP Luciana Berger

All the detail is in the Court Notes when Bonehill-Paine was sentenced by the judge.

https://t.co/wAyo6Yro5Q


5/x

The Justice sentencing remarks to Neo-Nazi explain the previous cases too. See the date 2014.

Yet the Guardian writer refers to this NON LABOUR case to effectively make her article a lie.

"Star of David" - this was Garron Helm another neo-Nazi..

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The chorus of this song uses the shlokas taken from Sundarkand of Ramayana.

It is a series of Sanskrit shlokas recited by Jambavant to Hanuman to remind Him of his true potential.

1. धीवर प्रसार शौर्य भरा: The brave persevering one, your bravery is taking you forward.


2. उतसारा स्थिरा घम्भीरा: The one who is leaping higher and higher, who is firm and stable and seriously determined.

3. ुग्रामा असामा शौर्या भावा: He is strong, and without an equal in the ability/mentality to fight

4. रौद्रमा नवा भीतिर्मा: His anger will cause new fears in his foes.

5.विजिटरीपुरु धीरधारा, कलोथरा शिखरा कठोरा: This is a complex expression seen only in Indic language poetry. The poet is stating that Shivudu is experiencing the intensity of climbing a tough peak, and likening

it to the feeling in a hard battle, when you see your enemy defeated, and blood flowing like a rivulet. This is classical Veera rasa.

6.कुलकु थारथिलीथा गम्भीरा, जाया विराट वीरा: His rough body itself is like a sharp weapon (because he is determined to win). Hail this complete

hero of the world.

7.विलयगागनथाला भिकारा, गरज्जद्धरा गारा: The hero is destructive in the air/sky as well (because he can leap at an enemy from a great height). He can defeat the enemy (simply) with his fearsome roar of war.