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May 22nd, 2021 
Awake Goy 
Update: Today Emily Wilder issued a statement saying that the Associated Press fired her two days after editors assured her that her previous activism was not a bar to her being a reporter. Wilder said this shows that reporters cannot “share the painful experience of Palestinians” without being “smeared” and accused of being “irredeemably ‘biased.’“
In the midst of the expulsions in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, the Israeli police attacks inside Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Israeli protests inside the green line, and the call and response of the devastating, targeted IDF attacks (240 plus killed) on Gaza and rocket attacks into Israel from Gaza (12 killed) – the unceremonious firing of the young journalist Emily Wilder at the Associated Press seems like small potatoes. The problem is, however, that her firing, is an important structural exemplar of the system that helps to enable continued US support for Israeli settler colonial occupation.
Wilder was “Twitter-outed” by the Stanford College Republicans, (a completely unbiased group, with only the best of intentions, surely) for being a member of Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine (and for having described Sheldon Adelson as a “mole-rat looking billionaire.” I’m thinking this is an insult to mole rats, but that’s just me). Both groups are notorious for advocating for an end to the occupation, BDS, and stopping US military support for Israel, The right-wing echo chamber ginned this up into a social-media campaign that had the AP first supporting her.
“Not long after the thread started to gain steam on Twitter, Wilder says an Associated Press editor called her and said she would not get in trouble for her past activism and social media activity. Then came the rest of the week.” – Wilder told SF Gate.
Wilder only a few weeks after being hired, was fired. No specific reason was given other than “violations of AP’s social media policy during her time at AP” In an interview with SF Gate, Wilder unambiguously cited real “cancel” culture:
“There’s no question I was just canceled,” Wilder told SFGATE by phone Thursday afternoon. “This is exactly the issue with the rhetoric around ‘cancel culture.’ To Republicans, cancel culture is usually seen as teens or young people online advocating that people be held accountable over accusations of racism or whatever it may be, but when it comes down to who actually has to deal with the lifelong ramifications of the selective enforcement of cancel culture — specifically over the issue of Israel and Palestine — it’s always the same side.”
And this is precisely the point, I would claim that if Wilder had conservative-normative views on Israel/Palestine, that nothing like this would have transpired. If you look at most of the Jerusalem bureau chiefs and writers for the New York Times over the decades, (Isabel Kershner, David Halbfinger, Judi Rodoren, etc) many have had extremely strong, explicit and proud ties to Jewish Israel, this was never considered (by those in power) to be an objectivity problem requiring correcting, let alone firing. I am not implying that such ties and background are disqualifying, on their face, but simply that they exist and seem far more germane to the reporting, at hand, than does Emily Wilder’s past middle east work to her local AP reporting in Arizona.
Indeed, thinking that her previous activities and writing on Israel/Palestine have anything to do with her current reporting in Maricopa county, Arizona, seems a deep form of maximalist paranoia.
The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative publication suggested, irrationally, that AP’s “objectivity” could be compromised by keeping Wilder, given the AP office in the bombed Gaza building alleged by Israel to house Hamas offices. Other conservative, reactionary, voices also chimed in, Fox News and the Federalist, as well as Senator Tom Cotton.
It should be made clear that “objectivity” is a chimeric conceit assuming that reporters should only report the “facts” – a convenient myth that allows establishment positions to become default objective positions. And all humans, including reporters, have opinions and points of views that will always intrude on any particular story.
The good news is that Wilder is getting strong support –
“Amazing how quickly a talented young reporter’s career can be snuffed out by a Twitter mob that decided to feign outrage over some college tweets,” tweeted the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler. “And if [Wilder] somehow violated @AP’s social-media rules, the solution is to offer guidance, not termination, to a new reporter.”
Emily Wilder said “It’s devastating of course,” she said. “I love journalism and part of what I think makes me such a capable, powerful journalist is how much I care about the people I write about, particularly the marginalized.”
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