Originally posted on May 26, 2021. Reposted without edits.
On or about May 19, 2021, it transpired that The Associated Press (“AP“) has fired one of its newsroom assistants, Emily Wilder, after only 16 days on the job. While AP has remained fairly cagey regarding the firing, only noting that Wilder had violated the organisation’s social media policy but without identifying any specific posts or comments deemed to have done so, it transpired that just before the firing several Republican-affiliated media organisations “found out” about Wilder’s association with pro-Palestinian activism and social media postings while at university, and helped pressure AP into sacking her on the spot1. The triplet cherries on top of this particular situation are that, one, Wilder herself is Jewish, and so can hardly be accused of antisemitism; two, that her work at AP had nothing whatsoever to do with Israel, Palestine, or the freshly concluded round of Israeli-Palestinian hostilities; and three, that within days, over 100 AP staffers published an open letter demanding “clarification” and the creation of a “discussion forum”, among other things. Not that the latter action is likely to have any meaningful effect, in my view, but at the very least it suggests that the Wilder sacking was a purely managerial decision divorced utterly from her newsroom performance, for all the 16 days that she was there.
There are two separate tracks to take here. The first is that the Wilder firing, or sacking, or axing, if one prefers, constitutes a classic example of corporate censorship. The press might term itself “free” – it makes for a good marketing point, one supposes, just like “fair and balanced” – but that is, of course, grossly inaccurate. Saying, writing or doing the wrong thing, taking the wrong political stance, or questioning the prevailing consensus, might all ultimately result in a given reporter being silenced, whether by editorial refusal to carry their stories or by a simple sacking. One might recall Phil Donohue being kicked from MSNBC due to his opposition to the then-impending invasion of Iraq; one might also recall Seymour Hersh being effectively shut out of The New Yorker for writing investigative pieces that dared criticise the Obama administration. These are comparatively big names in print and television journalism. What of a relative no-name like Emily Wilder? Should the AP protect such an insignificant cog in its machine while exposing itself to attacks from the right, and with the still smouldering Israeli-Palestinian conflict for background? Or should it cut its losses, axe Wilder for her past associations, not even for anything she had actually written for AP, and call it a day?
From a corporate standpoint, the answer is plainly obvious, and, just as obviously, represents yet another expression of corporate censorship. In this sense, one can only hope that Wilder might find some other port in a storm, so to speak, and get a chance to actually have a journalistic career.
There is another angle to the whole affair, however, which is that the whole kerfuffle began with someone conducting a survey of Emily Wilder’s social media history, dragging up the posts or comments that could be best utilised against her, and proceeding from there. That she might have made these posts while a student at university – one might have at least a little understanding for what someone might get up to at that age – is immaterial. Nor is it material that she might have made these only a year or two ago; imagine if Emily Wilder had worked at AP for five, ten, fifteen years, and then some right-winger found these posts and made the same attack during yet another Israeli-Palestinian flare-up. Would AP have protected her then? One has grave doubts…
The point is that the unfortunate character of social media is that everything, everything, even many if not all of the posts and comments that one ultimately deletes, ends up in the public domain, and can be used years later to engineer an attack on one’s character, to get one fired from one’s job – or to scupper one’s chances of obtaining new employment, to “cancel” someone, in modern parlance. Sometimes this may happen deservedly, say, if someone makes some loathsome comments and these come to light even a decade later2. At other times, someone may write something relatively innocuous, or even express a different, and dare I say nuanced, political point of view. Imagine a corporation, during an interview process, scanning another Emily Wilder’s social media history and finding that she had been a pro-Palestinian activist. Or expressed admiration for Cuba’s healthcare system. Or commented favourably on a quote from Karl Marx. Imagine a new invasion of some place filled with brown people and oil is afoot, and someone’s Twitter postings show doubts of the prevailing media narrative of the day.
My point, echoing one I have made previously, is that now we have entered an era where unless one stays completely off social media – hardly a tolerable option for any reasonably sociable individual these days – or limits the totality of their social media activity to posting cute kitten photos with no text of any kind, a person’s thoughts, views, utterances and even random and thoughtless comments can be catalogued, parsed, and, if the opportunity arises, employed against them. Some freedom of speech this is turning out to be…