ANTIFA SPY OR JOURNALIST?: THE GIG ECONOMY AND THE CAUTIONARY TALE OF TALIA JANE

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Officials in New York City Mayor Eric Adams' office targeted a journalist for retaliation and a City Councilmember is calling for the reporter's city-issued press credential to be revoked.

"This woman should NOT have press privileges in City Hall. Period," Queens Councilwoman Vickie Palladino tweeted Feb. 2.

"She is an activist, not a journalist. With a long history of affiliations and cooperation with violent radicals. There is ample evidence of this online. She should not have a press pass," Palladino elaborated in another tweet.

Meanwhile, City Hall itself questioned whether "this woman" was a journalist at all. 

"Are you an activist or journalist? It’s unclear to us," NYC Immigrant Affairs tweeted. 

Even other journalists questioned whether the person in question is a journalist. 

Todd Maisel, board member of the New York Press Photographers Association, tweeted "She is dangerous 2 all of us, both elected officials & to real members of the media."

"If she's a journalist, I welcome her,” the veteran news photographer told me later. “But she needs to be unbiased in the field. Journalists don't direct protesters, give advice to protesters, try to intimidate or attack other journalists or act in ways that even suggest they do."

A person long-known to The Free Lance with proven reliable sources inside the NYPD made "this woman" sound like the Antifa Mati Hari. They accused her, on background, of "providing intelligence info on police movements to protestors. She was also way too close to those protestors, beyond what any journalist would be doing."

Talia Jane, 33, represents the new breed of independent, Internet-based journalists. She makes a living contributing to publications who don't think she's good enough to be hired by them, but are willing to use her labor anyway because she's good enough and desperate enough to give it away almost for free. She fills in the large gaps between paid reporting with tweets and private donations.

Mainstream, corporate media calls this the "gig" or "freelance" economy. I call it exploitation. That's why I started The Free Lance. But that's a topic for another day.

Jane's work has been published by the New York Post, VICE, Teen Vogue and The Guardian, among others. She's also contributed to non-corporate, independent publications such as Hellgatenyc.org (latest investigative blockbuster, "Peeing is Believing") and Its Going Down. HellGate bills itself as "worker-owned news" produced by "journalists." Its Going Down, on the other hand, says nothing about journalism or news: it's "a digital community center for anarchist, anti-fascist, autonomous anti-capitalist and anti-colonial movements across so-called North America." 

Jane's problem started when she decided, without an assignment from a traditional news publication, to cover a group of travelers who were light years from home and boldly camping in midtown Manhattan. When the travelers first landed in New York, Mayor Eric Adams's administration put them up in a fancy midtown hotel. When the City tried to move them to an ordinary shelter like those ordinary homeless New Yorkers are ordinarily housed in, they whined.

Half refused to go to the shelter. They camped out on the sidewalk in front of the hotel instead. 

The City cleared the encampment last Wednesday night. The whole episode looked embarrassing, from every angle, Left and Right, Liberal and Conservative. The City looked for scapegoats. Sounding like Southern Segregationists describing Freedom Riders, the City accused "outside agitators" of encouraging the travelers to rebel. As if guys who just walked all the way from South America couldn't make decisions for themselves.

Manuel Castro, City Immigrant Affairs Commissioner, told Univision activists lied to the campers: “They are telling them that we are establishing detention centers, which is incorrect.” 

It was the city agency that Castro controls, Immigrant Affairs, that then questioned in a tweet whether Jane was a journalist: "Are you an activist or journalist? It’s unclear to us."

That tweet was the Digital Age equivalent of a hit-list. It was as if someone in City Hall slipped the New York Post a list of targets with Jane's name on it. The rabidly right-wing newspaper was too happy to do City Hall's dirty work: "Meet the ‘agitators’: NYC migrant standoff backed by these lefties and others." Jane was second on the list. 

Jane spoke with the Post. She'd once contributed to the newspaper, after all. She denied being an activist. She did, however, admit tweeting for “mutual aid groups” to contact her “if you’ve got anyone who can assist” storing the campers belongings after their encampment was dismantled.

Jane deleted the tweet in question, but not two others that appear to reference it: "Mutual aid groups-please circulate to your people." Later Jane tweeted "UPDATE: Resolved!"

Jane's offer to help secure the travelers’ property was “not something I usually do,” Jane explained to the Post. 

“Everything was really chaotic. I wasn’t thinking," Jane explained. "That doesn’t make me an activist.”

Once upon a time there was a bright, clear line between being an "activist" and being a "journalist." The Internet changed that, like it changed everything else. For independent, Gig Economy journalists who rely on social media to build their brand, broadcast reports and solicit donations, walking that line can be challenging if not daunting.

I didn't vote for this. None of us voted for this. This is the world the media powerbrokers of the Digital Age created. Be patient. We're adapting. As we adapt, mistakes should be examined as teaching opportunities all can learn from, not pretexts to bloviate or, worse, pontificate. Yet, there are rules from journalism's old, pre-Digital world that we must, for journalism's sake, take with us into the future. 

What should they be? Real journalists know their power can be awesome. It can bring down governments. It can change the course of history. It can even kill. Real journalists respect their power. They only exercise it ethically. Besides, journalism's power is based on it being not just neutral and fair in fact, but that it be perceived by the general public as neutral and fair. 

I'm not ordinarily one to memorize rule books, but the New York Times has an excellent handbook of journalistic ethics every real journalist should read at least once. Ethics, for me, generally means 100% truth and everyone gets the chance to tell their side of the story without distortion, including people I wouldn't share a beer with. 

Pro-tip: viruses aside, if you have to put a mask on your face to "report" that's not journalism and you're not a journalist. 

Still, journalists are people. People make mistakes. If every journalists' mistake was punished, there’d be no journalists. 

The Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment has control of city-issued press credentials like the one Councilmember Palladino tweeted should be revoked from Jane. The agency, known as MOME, could theoretically attempt to revoke Jane's credential at Councilmember Palladino's request. 

I asked City Hall whether MOME will act to revoke Jane's press credential. They have not responded.

I asked Jane to comment. She declined to speak for the record. 

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