Pissed Off About Something You See on the Web? Call Out the Person, Not the Organization.

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Over at National Review, David French writes:

For a ‘Peaceful’ Group, Black Lives Matter Sure Does Love Cop Killers and Murderous Dictators

I don’t know how I missed it, but this sickening essay from Black Lives Matter has to be read to believed. Entitled “Lessons from Fidel: Black Lives Matter and the Transition of El Comandante,” it begins….

I’m not especially trying to pick on French here, but this gives me an excuse to gripe about something that I see too often these days.

Let’s stipulate that the essay in question is horrible. I don’t care one way or the other. What I do care about is that French attributes it to “Black Lives Matter.” But that’s not the case. It was written by a specific person, not by BLM as some kind of official position statement. It represents them no more than I represent Mother Jones.

Still, at least MoJo employs me and has some responsibility for what I write. You can’t even say that much about the author of the Castro piece. To the extent that there’s an “official” BLM organization, it’s here. This is the organization founded by Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, and Alicia Garza. But pretty much anyone can set up shop under the BLM name, and the essay French links to comes from a Medium site called @BlackLivesMatterNetwork. It has posted a grand total of three pieces in the last two months. I have no idea who wrote them or who the site is associated with.

Condemn the piece all you want. But it’s not fair to use it to tar “Black Lives Matter.” They aren’t responsible for everything that’s tossed onto the web under the BLM banner.

UPDATE: It turns out that the official BLM site shared the Castro essay on its Facebook page. So it’s fair to call them out for promoting it.

My general complaint stands, however. If I write something, it means “Kevin Drum says,” not “Mother Jones says.” If David French writes something, it means “David French says,” not “National Review says.” Needless to say, this rule is for personal opinion/analysis pieces. News organizations are corporately responsible for editorial opinions and straight news.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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