Reporter for the #Independent embarrasses himself on Twitter

Yesterday we posted about an article at The Independent on Donald Trump’s scheduled visit to Israel – Trump to visit controversial Jerusalem site, Israel PM Netanyahu, reports say, Dec. 11.  

(Trump, who’s been roundly condemned for racist statements about Muslims, later cancelled the visit.)

We focused our attention on the decision by the journalist, Massoud Hayoun, to seek comment on the row from anti-Israel extremist Ali Abunimah.

Following our post, we decided to tweet Hayoun and ask him why he thought that the views of an extremist like Abunimah were relevant in a row about Trump’s extremist position on US immigration.

Here’s the exchange

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So, to recap: A journalist for one of Britain’s major dailies believes that Ali Abunimah is a credible voice on the issue of racism and that not interviewing Abunimah for his story would be “censorship”.

As my colleague Gilead Ini aptly observed in a tweet following the exchange, Hayoun intentionally confuses two journalistic concepts, “censorship” and “accountability,” so as to avoid the latter.

Postscript: After the exchange, Hayoun, the intrepid reporter boldly standing up for free speech, blocked me:

massoud

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