From doxxing to death threats: Are music critics misunderstood? • FRANCE 24 English

It’s time now for scoop. Our weekly conversation on international media and the political and economic headwinds confronting the industry. We look at who shapes a narrative. Explore journalistic ethics and ask the reporters the difficult questions. With trust in the press at a nadier is a critical eye on a critical profession. [Music] Could giving a bad review cost a critic their career or worse their life? And are there some fans who are tonedeaf to the job of a music journalist? First, let’s look at how things used to be. Rolling Stone magazine had been notorious for its harsh reviews only to occasionally give softer takes years later. This is her 1969 take on the Beatles Abbey Road. It said that the album treads a rather tenuous line between boredom, beetleum, and bubblegum. Old school critics were notoriously difficult. Just two months ago, The New Yorker asked if music criticism has lost its edge. When I was growing up, critics were critical. That seemed central to what they did. The Waldorf and Statatler, the Muppets critics. On a scale of 1 to 10, here’s your score so far. A site like Pitchfork, they famously once gave a 0.0 to an Australian band called Jet. And instead of writing a review, they had a a little video of a chimpanzeee peeing into its own mouth. One of the things that music critics started talking about was rockism, which was the idea that critics cared too much about rock and roll. They didn’t like R&B. They didn’t like mainstream pop music. Over the course of the 2000s and the 2010s, that really began to change. Some people called this trend optimism. Criticism became a little more driven by consensus. And the consensus often was that all of these popular albums were pretty good. So, rockism, optimism, and perhaps another useful term is stance. Some say it’s a mixture of the word stalker and fan, but it most likely goes back a quarter of a century to an Eminem song of the same name. Dear Slim, you still ain’t called a hope. I ain’t mad. I just think it’s you don’t answer fans. If you didn’t want to talk to me outside the concert, you didn’t have to. But you could have signed an autograph for Matthew. That’s my little brother, man. He’s only 6 years old. We waited in the blistering cold for you for 4 hours and you just said no. That’s pretty man. You’re like a idol. He wants to be just like you, man. He likes you more than I do. Now, about 6 years ago, NPR wrote that the word Stan used to be synonymous with overzealous or obsessed. But it’s become a badge of honor for fans committed enough to show up and go all out for their favorite star on the internet. So, there’s a lighter side of being a stand. for is posting your reaction to Taylor Swift’s latest album. Like here on Chatson Reacts. We’re going to hear a new track on. We are sitting down to react to the live of the show girl and I’m actually sick. Like I might get it. What is she going to say to us today? Like I just like I just I just you know what I feel like if you’re not a massive Taylor Swift fan, it’s just like this is genuinely lifealtering. That’s not a parody. That is genuine enthusiasm. But what happens when people cross the line because there’s a darker side to stand culture as well. Like after one critic did not give a positive review to Swift’s latest album, a user posted on X, quote, “I hope you get fired for your clearly biased review. You are the bane of journalism and deserve nothing short of a painful long life in some gulag in Siberia to realize how awful of a human being you are.” And that’s just trolling. But it gets worse. There’s no shortage of articles documenting fans harassing critics over their reviews, including uh this headline from the Business Insider. Quote, “Taylor Swift’s fans sent me death threats, dox my family, and accused me of being a pedophile.” And it’s not just Swifties. Name your pop star. From pop to K-pop, Drake, Mickey, BTS, and beyond. So, what does this all mean in a bigger picture? Let’s bring in our guest, Ming. Jay Jung, a pop critic based in Seoul and John Doran, the editor and co-founder of The Quietest. He joins us from Wiltshire. Hello to you both. Um, just want to begin with you, Mingj. Uh, two questions. You’ve received a lot of abuse. Is it based where you are in Seoul or is it international? And what’s the worst abuse you’ve experienced firsthand? I’m based in Soul, but some of the most unexpected attacks came from uh the Middle East and Africa, of course, American Europe, too. I still remember being shocked when an Iraqi country code appeared on my phone one day. And there have been constant hacking attempts on my social media accounts, and some even used my name and email to sign up for random websites. So my inbox became completely unusual. It was really shocking and surreal. Yeah, MJ, stay stay with us on that. Uh, some outlets have published negative reviews anonymously to spare the critics that the backlash. Do threats like these raise a prospect of self-censorship and how how much of a concern is that? Um it’s really harmful and dangerous to me but uh I think uh it it even get worse that uh I’ve already faced. Uh but my attitude has been more like let’s just ignore wait and see. Uh usually it fades after a week or two. Uh John, you’re in a a very different world. Metal, techno, folk, industrial. I don’t know if fans in those genres display similar behavior, but you do have regular investigative pieces that are are very serious. Tell us about those. Um, yeah. So, the only time I’m really worried about kind of blowback from stuff we publish is when we talk about the intersection between the international neo-Nazi movement and how they try and infiltrate um kind of underground scenes across Europe and through the uh through the world because in that situation we’re talking about um uh groups like the Order of Nine Angles who actually have murdered and tortured people in the past. So my concern there is that is an appropriate time for writers to be anonymous or if I’m using a named writer who might be an academic to ensure that I don’t accidentally give away their location if they happen to be in hiding. Um, I know it’s awful when people pile on you online, but I have to say that I also thought it was ridiculous that the Pace uh review of the Taylor Swift album last year came out as under an under an anonymous name. I felt like compared to the number of actual news journalists who’ve been killed in the Middle East over the last two years that we’ve got it quite easy as music journalists. Yeah. Yeah. That’s very important context. John, the other thing you’re doing when you’re publishing those pieces about neonaut is you’re providing context about this music, about the cultural scene, about this modern time we’re in. So, so where where we are as a world, as a society, and I I wonder if that would be lost if music critics were to disappear. I um yeah, of course, you know, like I I mean, the way that I look at it is music itself is pre- language. You know, it’s music comes from parents singing to a newborn child. And you know probably hot on the heels of that came a much discussion about whether this singing to the child was good or not. I see music criticism is fundamental to um um to to to life. Um you know but also if you look at um streaming services it’s an avalanche that no one person can get through on their own. 3.6 million new tracks are uploaded every month to Spotify. I need someone to help me through it. You do. Everyone does. It would take something like 40 years to listen to every single new track that’s put up by Spotify in one month. Yeah. The streaming services. That’s an argument against getting rid of critics. It’s also an argument that some give for getting rid of uh critics. Mingj um some say album reviews are losing importance. Uh before streaming platforms, critics were particularly helpful to help people decide whether to shell out 15 or 20 bucks for an album. Uh MJ, are critics a dying breed? Um yeah, we are dying breed, but yeah, we are still relevant. Uh of course, people don’t need critics to decide whether to shell out money for an album or single something else anymore. For just $10 a month, people can listen to every piece of music all around the world. But because people can listen to everything, critic can tell the stories behind the music and give context to its value if listeners are opened enough not to take criticism personally. Yeah, John, since the technology has changed how we listen to music, do music critics need to change how they do their job for the reader, is there something that they need to offer today that they didn’t have to offer a generation or two ago? Sure. Yeah. What I want is what I try to provide myself, which is um an insight born on years of research and years of listening. I know there are whole bunch of journalists all over the world that I turn to who can give me a unique perspective. And the best of them, like they’re not always really talking about the music. the talking about music as a key to understanding everything else about life. Yeah, that’s really important. John, I I got to ask you. Frank Zappo once said, quote, uh, “Music journalism consists of individuals who can’t write, interviewing those who can’t speak for audiences who can’t read.” Uh, what would you say to Frank Zappa, John? Uh, nothing. So, Frank Zappa didn’t say that. I mean, he might have said it, but he was copying off a musician called Elvis Costello. Elvis Costello took it from a comedian called Martin Mull. Martin Mole took it from a phrase that was used by economists a hundred years earlier, which is um which was sorry used by critics 100 years earlier. So what I would say to that is is this is why you need music journalists. You need someone who knows this information who can talk about it, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Very good point. Uh Mingj just curious all these uh pressures we’re talking about um in terms of doing your job day-to-day. What do you see as the biggest challenge for music criticism moving forward? Um in Korea there are so many Instagram magazines uh there instead of uh something like critics so they can go to backstage and interview artists but uh they’re not critics so they do not know about the history or the information fully. So, uh maybe it’s not very easy to uh alive, but uh maybe I I have to uh I have to stick around here. I’m running out of time, but I want to ask you guys real quickly. Uh John, you go first. Mingjay, you you follow up. Um you get commissioned to give a review for an AI band. Would you take the the assignment, John? Um, I would use it as like um a Trojan horse in all the in order to question the relevancy of AI music. Yeah. Mingj, what would you do? Would you take the assignment? Uh, I don’t think so. It’s not a music at this time for now. All right. All right. Well, I want to thank both of our guests, uh, John Dorne and Mingj Jung, uh, joining us. They’re music critics. uh doing a good job. Uh thank you very much, gentlemen. Um and that brings us to our quote of the week and it comes from the Guardian. Uh and it says, quote, “This is horrible anti-artic behavior from people wanting total consensus. That would be a strange and damaging thing to want even in politics where some degree of consensus uh is necessary to make a democracy run. In art, though, this impulse is downright fascistic.” That’s it for this edition of Scoop. Thank you for watching and please stay tuned to France 24. [Applause]

This week, FRANCE 24’s media show Scoop looks at the music critic. There are a number of challenges facing the job, including slashed entertainment reporting budgets and even hardcore pop fans threatening critics. Our guests are pop critic Minjae Jun and John Doran, co-founder of The Quietus, one of the leading independent voices in music and cultural criticism. They discuss the importance of music journalism – past, present and future.

Read more about this story in our article: https://f24.my/BY0r.y

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