(Headline USA) Fox News host Tucker Carlson mocked a leftist New York Times reporter this week for her over-the-top hypocrisy in claiming to be a bullying victim.
In response, the once admired paper not only rallied behind its snowflake reporter but launched yet another vicious and bullying attack on Carlson.
Although Taylor Lorenz’s job description is officially tech reporter, she has been widely criticized for her absurd advocacy and editorializing, which includes acting as a de-facto hall monitor for potentially offensive social media content.
Yet, the cancel-culture Nazi complained in a recent tweet that she had been harassed after the International Women’s Media Foundation announced that it was starting a new resource center for journalists subject to online abuse.
Lorenz told her followers to consider supporting women who were enduring online harassment.
“It’s not an exaggeration to say that the harassment and smear campaign I’ve had to endure over the past year has destroyed my life,” she sobbed.
“No one should have to go through this,” she continued. “The scope of attack has been unimaginable. It has taken everything from me.”
The tweet made Carlson point her out that night on his show, which usually reaches between 3 million to 4 million viewers each weeknight.
Carlson said there is real harassment in the world, but an online attack against Lorenz “is not it.”
He cited her as a privileged person claiming victimhood.
“Destroyed her life?” he said. “Really? By most people’s standards Taylor Lorenz would seem to have a pretty good life, one of the best lives in the country, in fact.”
Carlson was supported by journalist Glenn Greenwald, an occasional guest on his show.
Greenwald wrote that someone involved in polarizing debates should expect pushback.
“It’s still just online insults,” he tweeted. “That’s not persecution.”
Taylor Lorenz is a star reporter with the most influential newspaper in the US, arguably the west. Her work regularly appears on its front page.
Her attempt to claim this level of victimhood is revolting: she should try to find out what real persecution of journalists entails. pic.twitter.com/ZV0lm9CIqh
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 9, 2021
Although there is no evidence that Carlson was acting on any particular vendetta beyond objectively criticizing the perceived hypocrisy, the Times released a statement Wednesday denouncing it as “a calculated and cruel tactic, which he regularly deploys to unleash a wave of harassment and vitriol at his intended target.”
Fox backed up its star with its own response: “No public figure or journalist is immune from legitimate criticism of their reporting, claims or journalistic tactics.
The dispute followed a dispute last summer after the Times attempted to dox Carlson by reporting on his house in Maine.
He fired back by broadcasting the names of the so-called journalists. Although the Times backed off the story, the reporters later said they had been subject to online abuse and, in one case, an attempted break-in.
It isn’t the first time that Lorenz has whined about her chosen line of work.
In an interview for The.Ink newsletter last summer with journalist Anand Giridharadas she said she had a difficult time with strangers finding out about her personal life and background, even though she has no problem casting the spotlight on other private citizens.
“That’s been really, really, really horrible,” she said. “I mean, I’ve gone into kind of a deep depression over it. I’ve thought about quitting my job over it. I hate it.”
On Twitter this week, she posted a copy of one message she had received online from someone who said “I hope you cry yourself to sleep every night. I hope you take your own life. I hope you live all your days in fear. You are the scum of the Earth. Why are you still breathing?”
The person repeated “kill yourself” 11 times.
The vicious attack did not, however, seem out of place in the social-media cesspool of the Twittersphere, where many bullying victims lack the following and clout that Lorenz has to push back against the online mob-mentality.
A spokeswoman for the Times said it has “dedicated staff and robust measures in place to protect journalists” against the overall backdrop of threats and online attacks. The newspaper would not discuss details.
Elisa Lees Munoz, executive director of the women’s media foundation, offered support on Thursday.
“Lorenz is a legitimate journalist whose work should be applauded, not attacked,” Munoz insisted.
“Women journalists must be able to do their jobs without fear for their lives,” she continued, without saying whether the same was true for conservative, male journalists like Carlson.
Carlson’s wife, Susie was the victim of a home attack by Antifa in 2018.
While alone, she was forced to lock herself in a pantry and call police when the far-left terror group gathered outside the family’s Washington, DC-area home, chanting “Tucker Carlson, we will fight. We know where you sleep at night.”
That same year, Carlson also was forced to defend his 19-year-old daughter from lewd remarks by a drunken, left-wing patron while dining at a Charlottesville, Virginia, country club.
“It took enormous self-control not to beat the man with a chair, which is what I wanted to do,” Carlson wrote in a statement.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press.
