NYT was happy to write about Virgil Texas of Chapo Trap House without revealing his real name [0].
Implying that their actual rule is: yes to pseudonymity for people with whom we politically sympathise, no to pseudonymity for people with whom we don't.
That kind of inconsistency isn't worthy of respect.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/us/politics/bernie-sander...
I don’t see any reason not to give Scott Alexander’s real name. The mere fact that he’d rather keep it a secret doesn’t strike me as a good reason.
What reason did they have not to give Virgil Texas' real name? The article I cited acknowledged it as a pseudonym, so they knew it wasn't his real name. I'm sure they either know what his real name is, or they could have easily found it out – indeed, the first page of a Google search for "Virgil Texas real name" contains the answer.
I think they should respect people's requests for pseudonymity unless there is a compelling public interest in not doing so – which means they wouldn't reveal either Virgil Texas or Scott Alexander's real names. Alternatively, if they don't agree they should default to respecting people's requests for pseudonymity, then they should be consistent in denying it, and deny it to Virgil Texas as well.
The only interesting question here is whether there’s some overriding reason why the NYT should collude with Scott Alexander in keeping his identity semi-secret (it’s not like it was actually secret anyway). There just isn’t any such reason.
I think the NYT is perfectly within its legal rights to publish bad journalism. If the NYT decided tomorrow to transform itself into the left-wing equivalent of Breitbart, that would be entirely legal, and so it should be.
But just as NYT has every right to publish what it wants, others have just as much a right to judge it negatively for doing so.
It is not legally obliged to be consistent, and I don't think it should be legally obliged to be consistent either. Giving the legal system the power to police journalism is very risky business, and I don't think the risk is worth it.
However, I personally think it is morally obliged to be consistent, and I will judge it negatively if it fails to be so – you may disagree, but maybe that's a sign that you and I have different moral values.
> The only interesting question here
Maybe the questions that interest you are different from the questions that interest me.
I notice that other than consistency (which is symmetrical and could equally argue that the NYT should have published the other person’s real name) you haven’t given any reason why the NYT should have colluded with Scott to keep his real identity a secret.
No you are not. But I think, if someone points out your inconsistency, a person (or group/organisation) really ought to have the honesty to be able to say "Yes, you are right, that's a fair criticism, I am being inconsistent, I will try to be more consistent in the future". And one way of being more consistent in the future would be to do the moral thing from now on, and obviously that would be morally superior to achieving consistency by choosing to consistently make the bad choice instead.
> you haven’t given any reason why the NYT should have colluded with Scott to keep his real identity a secret
He asked for it, and his reasons for asking for it were reasonable. Faced with a reasonable request from a person that their privacy be respected, I think the ethical thing to do is to respect their request, unless there is a strong public interest in disregarding it – which I don't think there is in this case. (And I'd add that if you are going to justify violations of the privacy of others by appeals to the public interest, you ought to clearly state your claim in doing so, which NYT has failed to do here.)
I was one of the many people who already knew Scott Alexander's real name. I don't know him personally, I'd just worked it out. But I wouldn't have posted that info publicly, because he asked people not to, and even though I don't know him personally, he seems like a decent guy and respecting his wishes in this matter was the moral thing to do.
>He asked for it, and his reasons for asking for it were reasonable.
His reason was basically that he might suffer some negative effects from the publicity. But almost anyone whose name is mentioned in the NYT might suffer some negative effects from the publicity. It’s “all the news that’s fit to print”, not “all the news except when someone asked us not to publish it”.
In the end the NYT has to come to its own evaluation of the merits of anyone's request for anonymity. The paper can't simply grant anonymity to anyone who asks for it. So just because Scott asked and the request wasn't granted doesn't mean that something has gone wrong.
Cicero defined justice as giving each their due; not a definition original to him, Plato and Aristotle said more or less the same thing. Inconsistency is a form of injustice because you are giving to one different from what you give to another without a good reason. Justice doesn't demand that you treat everyone the same, only that for any difference in treatment there is a valid justification – I give my own children hugs, I don't give hugs to the children of strangers, but that is not injust, since there is a good reason to justify that difference in treatment. Justice is a key part of ethics, indeed classically it is one of the four cardinal virtues.
> His reason was basically that he might suffer some negative effects from the publicity. But almost anyone whose name is mentioned in the NYT might suffer some negative effects from the publicity
He had specific reasons due to his dual role as both blogger and psychiatrist, that do not apply to the average person. The profession of psychiatry has certain expectations about psychiatrists hiding their opinions from their patients which don't apply to most other professions. Those reasons don't apply to "almost everyone" because most people are not psychiatrists, and most other professions don't care anywhere near as much if clients find out your opinions on unrelated issues.
> It’s “all the news that’s fit to print”, not “all the news except when someone asked us not to publish it”.
But what is "fit to print"? Traditionally journalism justified itself as serving the public interest. What is the public interest in publishing Scott Alexander's real name? I don't see how there was one.
> The paper can't simply grant anonymity to anyone who asks for it
Yes they can: If someone asks for pseudonymity, they should grant it unless there is a strong public interest in refusing it; and if they refuse it, they should be explicit about why they believe denying it serves the public interest in that particular case.
> Justice doesn't demand that you treat everyone the same, only that *for any difference in treatment there is a valid justification*
There are plenty of cases where there's no injustice in treating people differently without a specific reason. Take gifts as an example. It's inconsistent if I give one friend a big gift and another friend a small gift, but it's not unjust, as I'm under no obligation to give any of them gifts at all – and consistency in itself isn't an ethical constraint on behavior. I'm certainly not required to have a specific reason for spending $15 on Bob's gift and $100 on Mary's gift.
How can you be so sure? Maybe he's telling the truth, and the idea that he made it up was made up by you.
> The NYT isn't gullible enough to fall for that one.
As I said, they ought to default to granting requests for pseudonymity unless there is strong public interest not to, which there wasn't any in this case.
> There are plenty of cases where there's no injustice in treating people differently without a specific reason
The difference with your example of gifts, is that neither Bob nor Mary have any right to expect any particular gift. By contrast, if someone asks that we respect their privacy, we ought to respect it unless we have good reason not to. It is one thing to be inconsistent in gifts to friends, when we don't owe them anything in particular. It is another thing to be inconsistent in fulfilling one's obligations to others.
Sure, maybe I'm wrong. I'm open to evidence of this. As far as I can determine, psychiatrists are not required to keep their political views a secret.
>By contrast, if someone asks that we respect their privacy, we ought to respect it unless we have good reason not to.
But what are the implications of that for consistency? Consider that you're free to grant someone's request for privacy even if there isn't an overriding reason to do so or not to do so (just as you're free to give someone a gift without a reason). So just because the NYT honored one such request in the past doesn't entail that they're bound to honor all such requests in future. Again, the only interesting question is whether their reasons were good in each case.
I believe that journalists ought to honour all requests for pseudonymity, unless they believe there is a strong public interest in not doing so in any particular case, and if they believe there is such a strong public interest, they should be explicit about what they think it is, so others can judge their public interest claim. I think this is the decent thing to do, and sustains a culture of respecting people's privacy.
NYT did not follow that standard in the case of Scott Alexander.
It makes sense to me that they have a default policy/norm against it, and weren't able to justify overriding it in this particular case, especially given that the name was already public information.
To be clear, I agree that there was no need to use his name to tell the story they were telling, and I think the world would have been a better place if they were able to. But I don't think it's only attributable to malice that they did.