Gatekeeper Journalism Goes Full Brain Dead Stasi Enforcer
Via Mollie Hemingway, an absolutely astonishing piece of hit piece journalism from the Denver Post:
Feeding information to a critic! That’s very dangerous! Someone needs to put a stop to this unacceptable behavior!
Do Better Denver is a pseudonymous account on X that posts photos and video of homeless encampments in that filthy and declining city. They do this:
The Denver Post will not stand by and quietly allow this kind of…informationing! These people aren’t even properly credentialed for the sharing of actual things that are really happening, which raises serious ethics concerns! From the story, and read this carefully to see how glaring the bad faith framing language is:
The anonymously run account, which bills itself as a “citizen journalist” dedicated to finding “compassionate, tough-love solutions to homelessness,” exploded in popularity during the last two years. Critics say it relied on shock and conspiracy to steadily build its platform to more than 144,000 followers across Instagram and X.
There’s a video of a man with his pants around his knees, twerking in his underwear at a bus stop. People who appear to be homeless sitting by a fire. Needles. Blood on the pavement. Fistfights. Surveillance footage with the sound of gunshots. A man holding a cardboard sign. A rat running down the street. People who appear to be high, or unconscious, or overdosing….
DoBetterDNVR’s drumbeat of voyeuristic videos and photos — which made up about 57% of 1,900 posts on Instagram since July 2023 — is punctuated by screenshots of local news coverage, posts featuring publicly available criminal records, reposts from police departments, commentary on city policies, calls to political action and, rarely, proposed solutions for homelessness.
The account routinely excoriates Denver’s current leaders for the way the city approaches addiction and homelessness, and calls instead for tough-on-crime solutions like making it a felony to possess small amounts of drugs, shifting away from harm-reduction programs and forcing people into mandatory treatment.
DoBetterDNVR frequently criticizes Mayor Mike Johnston and sometimes levies personal attacks against his family and others.
They say there are a lot of homeless people, and problems associated with homelessness, in Denver. That’s using shock and conspiracy! Why? Why on earth? It’s shocking conspiracy-mongering to post photos and video of things you can actually see in the street, because they really exist? There’s no argument here. There’s just an unsupported framing assertion. It is shock and conspiracy to…say that…that are a lot of homeless people. In Denver. For crying out loud.
Also, they show blood and a man with his pants down and fistfights, and it’s voyeuristic to show that. The crushingly obvious question: Does the Denver Post ever publish photographs of violence and disorder, and is it voyeuristic for the newspaper to do so? So the use of “voyeuristic” is a framing word, a feelings word, punching your unconscious reception to make you perceive what Do Better Denver does as dark and cruel, but there’s no argument for that. It’s just a manipulation, lacking a foundation. Here’s is a thing. This thing is bad! Why is the thing bad? Because we have framed it as bad.
And then: “The account routinely excoriates Denver’s current leaders…DoBetterDNVR frequently criticizes Mayor Mike Johnston.”
If you asked a journalist what they do, they would tell you that they speak truth to power, comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable, and report the truth without fear or favor. But when you watch them describe other people, you immediately notice that they’re offended by people who criticize government officials. Criticism is invalidating: critics are people who are not to be trusted. The implication is that responsible journalism doesn’t cause people to doubt authority.
This is not journalism. The Denver Post has made itself a party organ and a branch of government. People are saying criticisms of officials, and that is not right! Saying criticisms is doing shock and conspiracy!
The journalist who wrote this garbage story tweeted it out, and look again at how she frames it, using the same language as the headline:
Feeding information to a critic is dark behavior that demands an investigation and exposure, professional journalist warns. Think about the underlying premises that have to be running on your cognitive software to get you to that idea. Legacy journalists regard themselves as a retaining wall for the support of existing authority — the criticism police. See also, from Mark McGrath, the discussion of “Guardians of Decay.”
Notice, remember, and know these people by their behavior.
I was just about to spin something up about this, but instead I'll pass along this tidbit and you can include it if you want:
https://x.com/dobetterdnvr/status/1952780473815687574
I have been informed that the Mayor’s office were the ones that looked at all the CORA requests over the last two years and tried to figure out who I am based on CORA requests and my posts (based on who was requesting them).
The Mayor’s office narrowed it down to three names and FED the story to the @denverpost
and told their contact at the Post to CORA the CORA requests in hopes of outing me and getting the media and my followers to turn on me.
The Mayor’s office said that @mikejohnstonco wants DoBetterDNVR gone because ‘I am ruining his narrative’. Is it legal for government officials to try and silence me via doxxing? Or engaging the Denver Post to do so?
I live in Denver. 10 blocks from my house yesterday there were people shooting up in the street, and wandering into traffic etc. Yesterday a high driver started doing donuts in a local park that just had been renovated at taxpayers expense. He passed within 10 feet of people sunbathing in the park when he jumped the curb on to the grass. Today a 12 year old boy was doing donuts in the park, on the grass, on a quad bike going 40mph on a public lawn. None of this is on Do Better Denver. This is just my “Lived Experience”. Meanwhile our CAPEX budget is high so the place has more and more shiny bits and more and more human tragedy every day. Both are happening here.