Twitter Makes Journalism And Academia Look Terrible

The cost of rushing online to provide the hottest take

Recently, Mark Joseph Stern, the Supreme Court reporter for Slate, went on Twitter to criticize the Biden Administration’s new proposed Title IX regulations for trans girls and women who wish to compete in girls and women’s sports. He concocted a whole argument about how this was a betrayal of vital members of the Democratic coalition and vulnerable teenage athletes. There was only one problem: as he later admitted, he had not even read the proposed regulation. He simply saw a story about it in the Washington Post and assumed the Post’s description was accurate. Of course it was not, and Stern had to make a sheepish correction.

This incident, minor in itself, is nonetheless telling as to where the media’s relationship with Twitter stands in 2023. Some media figures and organizations have retreated from Twitter due to dislike of Elon Musk and various decisions he has made, but in general, Twitter is still the place where journalists talk to each other, and the public. And one thing that experience has told us is that when journalists don’t have editors, they basically act just like the rest of us in getting perpetually outraged, spinning the truth, putting out talking points for one’s “team”, and getting basic facts wrong.

What Stern did, after all, is what all of us do when we see some story that immediately pushes our buttons. I do it too- just about every time I see some prominent shooting, I make a comment about how violent American culture is. Do I know the facts of the shooting when I do that? Well, sometimes basic ones. But I certainly don’t know the nuances and sometimes I have barely more than a headline to work with. Now I make no bones about the fact that Americans are a trigger happy, violent bunch and that I think this cultural rot is one of the reasons we have so much violence. I think that is true. But do I know whether there’s a connection between that and whatever shooting I am tweeting about? Of course not- I’m tweeting 2 hours after the shooting based on nothing more than what I read on Twitter.

But there’s still a difference (and this is not an excuse for my own bad behavior on Twitter): I’m not a journalist. I’m a lawyer. Everyone knows that lawyers make arguments, offer spin, and advance causes. Obviously, I shouldn’t outright lie in public statements, but you know what? I don’t. But when it comes to my Hot Takes, I come with the warning sticker attached.

In contrast, journalists are supposed to deal in facts. They are supposed to check things. Their work product is supposed to be the result of an editorial process, with careful editing and fact checking. When they are on Twitter popping off based on no facts at all, the public sees this. Indeed, every day the public sees journalists do this. What do you think that does for the public’s trust in the journalistic profession.

And that’s not all journalists do. Many journalists get into fights with other Twitter users. These fights often feature name calling, insults, profanity, and dishonesty. There’s a reason why back in the day, journalists didn’t get reply privileges in the Letters to the Editor section of the newspaper (and if some letter raised a serious issue, the paper would either issue a correction or run another, carefully reported piece addressing the issue). Humans are at their worst when they face criticism. We often revert into toddlers. We often forget about trying to tell the truth and make reasoned arguments. And again, the public sees some journalist attacking a critic with profanity and personal attacks, and what does that make the public think about journalism?

There’s also another field, previously esteemed by the public, that has suffered because of Twitter: academia. Again, the way academics used to speak to the public was either through peer reviewed papers (which had multiple editors) or through press appearances that were usually relatively genteel, with an interviewer discussing some matter of intellectual import with the professor.

But now academics are on Twitter, and… it isn’t pretty. First, all those things I just said about journalists also apply to academics. Academics are supposed to take evidence and data and carefully study it, but on Twitter, they react with the quickest Hot Takes to things they know nothing about, making their institutions look bad. And they also get into fights with Twitter users, also use bad language and insult, and also make bad arguments and shade the truth.

But even worse for the reputation of academia is the way expertise is prostituted on Twitter. I’m not a utopian- I understand there were always hackish scholars who got bad work through the peer review process or who talked extensively about stuff they knew nothing about. (I have told this story before, but I remember being struck how the very same law professors who had been presented as “criminal law experts” during the OJ Simpson trial went back on TV as “election law experts” during the 2000 Florida recount. These are two very different fields.)

But Twitter makes it much, much worse. It’s just very tempting for a history professor to punctuate what is basically standard political criticism of Donald Trump with “I’m a history professor, this is exactly like [insert historical event]”. Or for a statistician or internal medicine doctor to purport to be an expert on epidemiology whose opinions must be deferred to on COVID. It takes years of study to be an expert on anything, and even an expert must take time to take in all the facts on current events to know where they fit in any theoretical framework. But when academics act like rank pundits (and sometimes dishonest or biased pundits) on Twitter, it makes people think that academia is full of nothing but pundits and that scientific studies are worthless.

At some point the people with actual power in journalism and academia (publishers/editors and school administrators) need to recognize what Twitter is doing to their brand. And that’s going to mean some controls on what their employees say on Twitter. This will be easier in the journalism field- it actually wouldn’t be difficult to tell the Mark Joseph Sterns of the world that any substantive commentary or reporting on Twitter on a legal issue has to go through the same fact checking and editing as a piece in Slate would. Similarly, prohibiting reporters from using profanity or insults in their social media posts is a no-brainer.

It will be very difficult in academia, though, because academic freedom rightly protects the public statements of professors. Still, a professional norm could be formed that you don’t go on Twitter and pop off with Hot Takes, prostitute your expertise, or get into a fight with a normie or insult people. And collegial pressure and a talking to from the Dean can be used to at least exert some pressure on academics to not make their institutions look bad.

But this is a problem. Twitter brings out the worst in people. When your enterprise is built on the public’s trust, Twitter can really easily undermine that trust.