I honestly was not going to write one single word on the front page of A Voice for Men about the obscure publication known as ANIMAL New York and its apparent founder and reporter, known as Bucky Turco. ANIMAL New York (a property of Woven Digital) had requested a press pass to our conference on June 27 and 28, and had been granted one, in addition to being invited to attend the free press conference on June 26 (held at the same time as Warren Farrell’s pre-conference private workshop).
We noticed after the conference that ANIMAL New York had posted a couple of short reports, with some accurate, if arguably out-of-context, quotes, and we also noticed that they had not really “attended” the conference they had requested a pass to but rather had only attended the free press conference the day before the main event and just left, asking hardly anyone any questions of any substance. I figured, “Meh, that’s the way some reporters are,” and that was that. I left a couple of comments on the ANIMAL New York site, pointing out politely that they got a couple of things wrong, that some of the quotes were a bit out of context, and that I didn’t think they’d gotten the full story. I also politely gave a link to where their readers could go to look at the whole conference and make up their own minds about its merits, and let it go at that. We had, after all, seen far more egregiously abusive and irresponsible reporting from the likes of Adam Serwer and Jessica K. Roy.
Professional journalist John P. Ribner wrote a brief article for us about the lame coverage of the event from some (not all) press outlets, and how some of the reporters had seemed rude, noting something shallow and condescending that Bucky Turco had said to him while he was sharing experiences such as the way his beloved daughter was ripped away from him. Turco had interrupted John with a rude jab, and John had just walked away. Hey, what can you expect in these times when the pain and anguish of men, young and old alike, is routinely laughed at?
We really didn’t think Turco was worth more of our time. I didn’t even bother mentioning Turco’s lack of professionalism to the ANIMAL New York readers. Why bother? Just give people the link, let them make up their own minds, and move on.
But then I noticed Turco was posting stuff on his Twitter feed about how stupid we were, and was joining in on a juvenile, shallow mock-fest of MRAs with Matt Binder and Sam Seder. And so I, John Ribner, and Rosemary Ribner got into a little bit of a Twitter snarkfest with Turco. He called us stupid, we called him a dumbass, and he seemed dead set on saying that attending a couple of hours of a press conference and asking practically no questions was exactly the same thing as covering the conference for the next two days. It seemed a little misleading to his readers, but I chalked it up to a bit of shallowness on his part, maybe a bit of honest disagreement, and still, in the final analysis, not all that important.
Then he called me, obviously in a rage, and would not calm down when I tried to just be human and reason with him. Instead, he ranted and raved, making some of the most revealing comments about the shockingly shoddy state of modern journalism and ideological indoctrination of our times I have ever heard. It was now clear that reason and humanity had left this man, and all he wanted to do was tear down anyone who would dare question his dogmatic pseudoreligious beliefs about male and female power. And since then, he’s continued to tweet about this stuff, crowing about his prowess as a reporter and our general stupidity. Apparently he can’t just be a professional, admit to an error or a disagreement of interpretation, or issue an update and clarification like professionals do. So John Ribner and I decided to put together a video to help Bucky understand how journalism works. I hope he and his readers find it helpful:
Bucky Turco is, in the grand scheme of things, a pretty small fish in a big sea. But this sad little tale has inspired us to help him, and other amateur journalists like Adam Serwer and Jessica Roy, learn something about what professional journalism looks like. Or used to look like.
By the way, is this how Woven Digital looks after the interests of the young men it claims to cater to? We have to wonder.
