NBC News “disinformation” reporter Ben Collins went ballistic on Twitter after New York magazine columnist Jonathan Chait said liberal journalists have constructed their own “information bubble” as they attack conservative viewpoints.
Chait criticized Collins, who covers “disinformation, extremism and the internet,” according to his NBC News bio, in a column titled “In Defense of Independent Opinion Journalism,” which called out liberal media for “constructing a counterpart to the information bubble in which conservatives have long resided.”
Chait cited Collins’ militant acceptance speech after he received a Walter Cronkite Award for Excellent in Television Political Journalism.
“There is no meeting liars halfway, because the truth then becomes one-half lie,” Collins had said in the speech. “We must simply be louder, and clearer, with the truth.”
In response, Chait wrote, “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.”
Chait’s criticism of Collins was part of a larger, overall critique of liberal media groupthink.
“Where it was once rare to encounter some pseudo-fact circulating among the left, it is now routine to find people believing Michael Brown was shot with his hands up, lab-leak is a debunked conspiracy theory, or that Republicans are routinely banning instruction about racism,” Chait wrote.
In response, Collins unleashed a tweetstorm directed at Chait.
“I stand by what I said in that speech, and your 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.”
In another tweet, Collins referred to journalists like Chait as “country club weirdos” who are “just not living in the world we’re living in, and they’re the ones who get these fancy-ass columns to s–t on young reporters. It’s wild.”
“And guess who our bosses listen to?” Collins tweeted. “Not the young reporters. The ones they meet at the cocktail parties.”
Chait replied to Collins, tweeting: “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.”
He admitted to having “absolutely singled out” Collins “for criticism in this piece, and if you look at his ongoing meltdown on Twitter, it … does not exactly refute my critique.”
Collins made news last year after his bosses at NBC News suspended him from covering Elon Musk after he mocked the tech mogul on social media.
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