“On Thursday night, Emmett Rensin, the deputy editor of Vox’s first person section, sent a series of tweets that, among other things, urged people to riot if Donald Trump comes to their town,” wrote Ezra Klein, Vox’s editor in chief, in a statement posted this afternoon. “We at Vox do not take institutional positions on most questions, and we encourage our writers to debate and disagree. But direct encouragement of riots crosses a line between expressing a contrary opinion and directly encouraging dangerous, illegal activity. We welcome a variety of viewpoints, but we do not condone writing that could put others in danger.”
The tweets, continued Klein, violated the site’s standards, and a suspension of unspecified duration is now in place.
The disciplinary move may well satisfy critics who hammered Rensin for his thoughts on civil unrest. And that’s about it.
A little context to this episode is in order. Yesterday at a Trump rally in San Jose, protesters and supporters of the presumptive Republican nominee clashed.
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In light of all that, we have at hand another pointless journalism suspension, a knee-jerk response to public condemnation that this blog has blasted time and again. We emailed Klein with this question: “Is the suspension designed to provoke a rethinking of [Rensin’s] worldview, or to let him know that there’ll be penalties for expressing it?”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
