Being fired and declared an unperson apparently came as a surprise to Zac Kriegman:
I had been at Thomson Reuters for over six years—most recently, leading a team of data scientists applying new machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms to our legal, tax and news data. We advised any number of divisions inside the company, including Westlaw, an online legal research service used by most every law firm in the country, and the newsroom, which reaches an audience of one billion every day around the globe. I briefed the Chief Technology Officer regularly. My total annual compensation package exceeded $350,000.
In 2020, I started to witness the spread of a new ideology inside the company. On our internal collaboration platform, the Hub, people would post about “the self-indulgent tears of white women†and the danger of “White Privilege glasses.†They’d share articles with titles like “Seeing White,†“Habits of Whiteness†and “How to Be a Better White Person.†There was fervent and vocal support for Black Lives Matter at every level of the company. No one challenged the racial essentialism or the groupthink.
This concerned me. I had been following the academic research on BLM for years (for example, here, here, here and here), and I had come to the conclusion that the claim upon which the whole movement rested—that police more readily shoot black people—was false.
The accepted narrative was what was important. He couldn’t use facts to refute claims that supported the accepted narrative even when those claims were flat-out lies. First, he was silenced. Then he was called names. Then he was fired. Everything took place in a star chamber-style environment. He never had an opportunity to face his critics. No one really knew who they were or, at least they wouldn’t say. It’s all very Kafka-esque.
He shouldn’t have been surprised. It’s telling that his account was published at Bari Weiss’s substack since she’s now deemed a “right-wing shill” by many progressives. That means that it probably can’t reach its intended audience simply because they won’t read it and if you think the sort of epistemic closure that represents is limited to “the left”, you’d be wrong. The opprobrium heaped on “Never-Trumpers” and “RINOs” by conservatives should tell you otherwise. The True Believers can ignore idolatry but they cannot forgive apostasy.
Journalism is dead. Discourse is dead. Liberal democracy is dead or dying. There are acceptable left wing sources and acceptable right wing sources and all too frequently they’re telling different and conflicting stories. There’s little in between.
We are in the bizarre position that Russia is the Helm’s Deep of Western Civilization and liberal democracy.
We are only hearing his side of the story. I suspect a lot of it is true. I suspect some is not. Having lead and managed people for a long time that’s just how it works. I would note that in some of these cases when I read about them I get the sense that something else was also going on. This guy was an engineer, and economist (oh boy) and and a machine learning guy who made a point of telling us how important he was and was making a lot of money. Would not surprise me at all if he was a bit self important with the inability to admit he was ever wrong (this latter trait being a defining feature of most engineers and maybe even stronger in economists) and there were people who were glad to see him go whatever the reason.
I also think there is some aspect of not reading the room going on. Our CEO, whom I like a lot and think is very good at what he does, is a real Trump fan. Our leadership team is pretty relaxed with each other and we joke pretty freely about the political of the day so I can joke about Trump (some) but would I ever write out a serious screed criticizing Trump. No, work just isn’t the place for that. Religion and politics was always the old rule about no serious discussion at work. Maybe social media has helped break that down?
Steve
“I also think there is some aspect of not reading the room going on. Our CEO, whom I like a lot and think is very good at what he does, is a real Trump fan.”
This is a news organization, not a medical office or some other kind of business.
Journalism shares many features and principles with my former profession of intelligence. The idea that anyone in intelligence, journalism, or any profession in the business of collecting, analyzing, summarizing, and disseminating information for others ought to “read the room” is just a fancy way of advocating for groupthink and collective misinformation.
After all, the Air Force analysts (my wife knows them) who, back in 2002, suggested the aluminum tubes were for rocket bodies and not centrifuges could have “read the room” and kept their mouths shut.
“Reading the room” and not making waves is prudent in places where such debates are a distraction from the organizational tasks. Opinions about BLM and the relative number of people killed by police do not matter in the practice of medicine. In journalism and other professions they do.