“THE TOM WRIGHT-PIERSANTI MOMENT WAS LIKE A THUNDERBOLT”: THE TIMES TAKES INCOMING IN THE NEW “FAKE-NEWS” FATWA, BUT NO ONE IS TOO WORRIED—YET

Young journalists are in the crosshairs, having spent their entire lives on social media. But, said one source, “these guys are mostly out of bullets and desperate for attention.”

By Joe Pompeo @ The Hive @ VanityFair.com, Sept. 5

It’s a new front in Donald Trump’s war on what he calls “Fake News.” A few days before a front-page New York Times story revealed that a “loose network of conservative operatives allied with the White House” was amassing oppo research on journalists from news organizations perceived as hostile to the administration, mining ancient social media posts that could be weaponized in the 2020 run-up, the Times had already been hit with an incoming salvo. The group unearthed a series of anti-Semitic jokes from a staffer named Tom Wright-Piersanti, who edits one of the Times’ political newsletters. He’d tweeted the jokes a decade ago while in college, and they were gleefully published on Breitbart: “‘Crappy Jew Year’: New York Times Editor’s Antisemitism, Racism Exposed.” Wright-Piersanti apologized publicly on Twitter and told the Times, “I feel deep shame…and I am truly, honestly sorry that I wrote these.” [....]