NBC’s Ben Collins Throws Tantrum Over Progressive Columnist’s Criticism of Him: ‘Fancy-A** Columns to S*** on Young Reporters’
A column by progressive writer Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine has triggered a profanity-laced meltdown from NBC News reporter Ben Collins on Twitter.
Under the headline “In Defense of Independent Opinion Journalism,” Chait leveled a criticism of Collins’s acceptance speech for a Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Political Journalism.
“Triumphs of the truth are not accidents. They are times the American media — including and especially those outside of the disinformation beat — did not equivocate and did not give an inch to lies and the liars who tell them … But it takes unity, and not capitulation, in these moments,” argued Collins. “There is no meeting liars halfway, because the truth then becomes one-half lie. We must simply be louder, and clearer, with the truth.”
“The notion that there are times when a journalist’s job is to give an inch, because the other side has a point, did not receive even a nod from Collins,” noted Chait. “If you contemplate this information war from the perspective of one trench, and then the other, you don’t have to draw a precise equivalent between the two to understand that is not exactly conducive to introspection.”
This relatively mild critique of Collins’s philosophy was not taken to well by its target.
“Jon, speaking of the hack gap, if you’re going to complain about me in a column, reach out first. You didn’t,” replied Collins to Chait after he shared his column on Twitter. “Also, I stand by what I said in that speech, and you work is exactly what I’m talking about. I’m sorry for you that the winds are blowing away from arbitrary bothsidesism when two sides are asymmetrical, but thankfully it’s a boon to our profession that it is.”
Describing journalists like Chait as “country club weirdos,” Collins declared, “they’re just not living in the world we’re living in, and they’re the ones who get these fancy-ass columns to shit on young reporters. It’s wild.”
“And guess who our bosses listen to?” he complained. “Not the young reporters. The ones they meet at the cocktail parties.”
Collins was temporarily suspended from covering Elon Musk last year over his inappropriate remarks about the billionaire.
Chait responded by arguing that Collins’ impugnment of his ethical standards was meritless (“If I was reporting new claims about you, that would require a call for comment. Writing criticism of published work does not require reaching out for comment.”) and that Collins’ reaction to his piece should serve as further evidence of its insightfulness.
“If you look at his ongoing meltdown on Twitter, it … does not exactly refute my critique,” he tweeted.
