Investigative journalist and author Charles C. Johnson – founder and Editor-in-Chief of independent news site GotNews.com – explains the background behind getting the boot from Twitter for identifying Dallas-based nurse Nina Pham, who is currently being treated for Ebola.
Johnson said much of the media was reluctant to “push the envelope” too much and decided to withhold the nurse’s identity, which he was first to publicly name.
“I had a lot of journalists contact me and said, ‘Yeah, we had her name, but just didn’t reveal it – we wanted to wait for the family to give us the permission to report it. And to me that’s kind of weird, all of these people are raising money for her, I was the first person to publish that photo. I also published her Pintrest, where she talks about being a nurse.”
He said the publication of that information helped humanize her, and thereafter other media outlets like CNN and others were quick to jump on the Pintrest account that he first made public. “We’re all on social media now, we all have Internet presence, and we really kind of want to know who these people are,” Johnson said about his publishing philosophy.
“And when you publish somebody’s address, you publish somebody’s location who has Ebola, you’re not telling everyone, ‘Hey, go and break into this person’s house.’ You’re saying, ‘Hey, watch out, this could be your neighbor – and I think people want to know that,” he said.
Watch the full episode to also hear Johnson’s views on the saturated coverage of Ebola on the mainstream media, as as his perspective on the news reporting that occurred in Ferguson, Missouri in the wake of the shooting death of Michael Brown - plus his views on the practice of “checkbook journalism.”
Comments