Talk:Nathan J. Robinson

Adding Views

It would be nice to add some more of Robinson's views to the page, which can be found throughout his writing. Jmill1806 (talk) 22:07, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

@Jmill1806: I think his political views are unambiguous and significant enough to be included in the lead. THoughts? Flickotown (talk) 00:57, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

Flickotown, sure! I think a summary of views, such as the current "Robinson is a notable proponent of socialism.", could go in the lead. But I think he has offered enough detailed views on enough topics that a longer Views section would be great. Feel free to be WP:BOLD in adding content, and I can take a second look. Jmill1806 (talk) 13:13, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Sounds good. I;ve gone with just the "socialist" description as saying "Robinson is a notable proponent of socialism" again would be redundant. If there is any coments you have then let me know. Flickotown (talk) 23:54, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Siema 82.177.110.11 (talk) 07:57, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Explaining revert

I am reverting this edit.

This edit removes the text "as a columnist due to tweets critical of US military aid to Israel" and changes "Mulholland stated that Robinson's tweet was anti-semitic" to "Mulholland appeared to state that Robinson's tweet was anti-semitic".

Given the sources cited, the original seems more accurate.

The removed text is sourced to Robinson's article, which says: "I was only pointing out the completely accurate fact that we give a huge amount of military aid to Israel, that we single it out for special support, even during a pandemic.... It was made very, very clear to me: your tweet about Israel annoyed the editor in chief. Now you are fired. Do not come back."

The changed description regarding Mulholland's email adds more ambiguity than seems necessary. As quoted in the JPost article, Mulholland's email said, "Saying that the only Jewish state controls the most powerful country in the world is clearly antisemitic. The myth of ‘Jewish power’ informs murderous hatred. Delete this and apologize." This seems to unambiguously support the original statement "Mulholland stated that Robinson's tweet was anti-semitic". Freelance-frank (talk) 12:10, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree with your reversion. Both statements in the original seem accurate and more informative than in the edited version. Jmill1806 (talk) 15:18, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, don't mean to get too stuck in on what really is quite a trivial matter, and your points are well taken here. Regarding my second edit, careful examination of both Mulhollhand's email and Robinson's interpretation of it make it considerably less clear what Mulholland "stated". If you look at the email itself (as represented in Robinson's article) the line cited by JPost in fact comes after Mulholland's sign-off, and appears to be cut-and-pasted in. The entire set-up is odd. Did he paste this from another email, and forgot to remove it (I have done this on many occasions)? Did he mean to include this as a post-script written in a larger font, with a color background for this particular sentence? Why? Obviously we can't know, and that is the reason I had introduced the "appeared". In putting the matter this way, I was also reflecting Robinson's own attribution of that line to somebody else; as Robinson writes in his article:

"His email appears to quote (at the bottom) someone who called this anti-Semitism, though it is not clear who the quoted text is from."

This uncertainty is also captured by the other article cited, in Reason:

"The bottom of the email included a quote—it was not clear from whom—that read: 'Saying that the only Jewish state controls the most powerful country in the world is clearly anti-Semitic. The myth of 'Jewish power' informs murderous hatred. Delete this and apologise.'"

If the criteria adduced above are accuracy and informativeness, it seems considerably less informative to Wikiusers to perpetuate the unnuanced account provided by the JPost at the expense of Robinson's and Reason's more nuanced rendition; on the other hand, JPost may be the most RS here, in which case it may be that we are stuck with their poor reporting. Obviously this issue is not very important, but, respectfully, if the criteria we care about here are accuracy and informativeness, the original version seems inferior on both counts.

As to the first sentence I removed, upon further rereading of both the NJR article and the Wikipedia text, I think that I was wrong to have removed the extra information, and that it is in fact better to have some version of the original text; what had seemed notable in this entire episode was the discrepancy between what Mulhollhand had claimed was the problem and what Robinson took to be the problem, but, having reread the email and given due consideration to the word "alleged", the original version seems entirely appropriate. On the other hand, the text is not written terribly well; perhaps either "...fired Robinson..." or "...fired Robinson from his position as a columnist..." ("to fire x as a columnist" being awkward at best) "...as a result of his having tweeted critically about US military aid to Israel" ("he was fired due to tweets..." being similarly awkward and vague?). Even more pedantic, I realize. Anyway, do let me know what you think. Publius In The 21st Century (talk) 17:31, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

You make good points, Publius In The 21st Century. Thank you for discussing. I see that A) there is a good chance Mulholland was quoting someone in the postscript, a forwarded email in which he deleted the rest of the text of that forwarded email, leaving the relevant part, B) I don't think Wikipedia should take one person's screenshot as proof that another person wrote something in an email, C) The JPost article does not appear to have any proof that Mulholland sent this email other than Robinson's tweet. So I think the current wording should be modified. I have attempted a new wording that seems accurate, encyclopedic, and as concise as possible. What do you think? Jmill1806 (talk) 19:01, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Freelance-frank (talk) 22:55, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

I think that looks very reasonable, Jmill1806. Thank you, too, for the discussion, which I appreciate.

Are you ok with the drafting changes I just made (in accordance with my last point above)? My goal is not to change the meaning or the angle of presentation, but simply to produce better copy. (I'm sorry to be an insufferable pedant...) Publius In The 21st Century (talk) 16:36, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Me? Yes, those changes are fine. I like the original a little better, but that's only a personal stylistic preference. Thanks for working on this article, Publius. Jmill1806 (talk) 20:10, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

OK, excellent. Your point is taken. Thank you to you, too, JMillPublius In The 21st Century (talk) 18:34, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Summarizing exchanges

Regarding this revert. Details of these exchanges are mentioned in RS. Let's rely on their summaries and highlights if we decide to include these statements. Possible we should also be more careful about attributing different statements to staff and Robinson, given that most RS are attributing these tweets and things and aren't doing much original reporting. Freelance-frank (talk) 17:33, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Glenn Greenwald quote

Relatively minor issue, but I feel like the Greenwald quote ("brazen hypocrite") is misleading - he wasn't saying that Robinson's behavior is at odds with his stated politics. Instead he was calling Robinson a hypocrite in that (according to Greenwald) he would have joined the pile-on if it had been directed at someone else. 2601:184:4601:4650:596A:B594:6F40:B1BC (talk) 07:18, 26 February 2023 (UTC)