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dear journalists :boost_requested:​ 

I'd like to share an excerpt from the e-mail here that I sent to the journa.host admin, back when they were asking for people to explain why they were getting defederated. (I never did get a response, disappointingly.)

I think it explains pretty well why your journalist instances *keep* getting defederated on here.

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What it essentially boils down to: the fediverse as we know it today has pretty much been built by marginalized and vulnerable folks - whether due to sexuality, gender identity, disability, or whatever other reason. They've built this place because nobody cared about their needs on any of the other platforms, to serve as a safe social space for them. And all of these people have been significantly harmed by widespread journalistic malpractice over the years - the recent wave of transphobic reporting is just one example, but far from the only one.

This means that a bunch of journalists joining the network feels essentially equivalent (and in many cases, rightfully so) to hostile actors invading their (and my) community. There may well be individual journalists who are careful about how they interact with and represent marginalized folks, but the harsh reality is that the vast, vast majority of journalists have a history of doing the exact opposite - whether it be through deliberately harmful reporting, or the infamous "neutral journalism" (which doesn't exist, and in practice boils down to a strong bias towards the status quo, ie. one that marginalizes people).

The result: the marginalized folks running large swathes of the network simply do not want journalists in their spaces. There is absolutely no relationship of trust towards journalists, quite the opposite, and they are - rightfully - concerned that journalists will act unethically, not just in the form of pushing sensationalist news, but also by eg. intruding into close-knit/semi-private conversations with their journalist hat on, essentially serving as a permanent threat to publicize private conversation. It's like walking into a local bar unannounced with an army of journalists, and this distresses people accordingly. Nobody knows how their words are going to be twisted or decontextualized.

I do not think that this is possible to fully solve with different instance policy. Following community CW norms is certainly helpful, and for some instances it will be enough if you're all staying within the community norms of marginalized communities. However, I expect that for many other instances this will not be enough - because the problem isn't just with fedi policy, but with the journalistic apparatus in general. The journalistic community needs to reckon with the harm that it has caused to marginalized folks for many decades through irresponsible reporting, faux neutrality, and platforming of fascist rhetoric, while ignoring warning calls from the marginalized folks threatened by it - and likewise, hold fellow journalists accountable when they are not doing the same. Until that happens, journalists as a group will simply not be welcome in many spaces

dear journalists :boost_requested:​ 

@joepie91 Precisely this. I can understand the joy or excitement some people feel from mastodon and the fedi more generally becoming (more?) mainstream, that sense of having "made it," and journalists come with that. But to me, the sensation of having them around is more of a "not this again."

dear journalists :boost_requested: 

@joepie91 The problem is that most journalists are decoupled from the real world.
Many of them are like the people who type ALL IN CAPS on forums.

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