Nanso

-The Heated Rivalry team did not find out about the win yesterday like it was a surprise; Peabody winners are always notified ahead of time, generally 1-2 weeks notice and it is under embargo until the public date.

-That lead time enables all winners to have their promo material ready, ie the entire HR team, promo and social included, would therefore have plenty of time to get their announcement material ready. So posting a solo photo and not both leads was a very conscious choice. (Oh and btw, both nominees and winners can ask the Peabody folks which photos they want highlighted for official Peabody posts!)

-Unless they have the most incompetent social and PR team ever created, it is very hard to believe the promo roll out was not run by the EP of the show.

-More than that, there is no world in which they have not seen the way POC fans have been upset about the variety of things (racist hate train on tw, criticism of public comments by JT and RR, the list goes on) that have happened re: Hudson. And they still made that choice.

Journalism is often exploitative but one of the things a *good* journalist is supposed to do is to 1) make sure they aren't doing that in their reporting and how they view the story and 2) minimize the chances of readers doing so. More than that, it's become consistent practice in the journalism industry to employ ongoing consent with interviewees, particularly those relaying stories and experiences surrounding trauma. Ie, after an interview, you check in with the interviewee and make sure they still consent to the interview being published.

Daniel is not a sensitive journalist, which is a window into who he is as a character; he's predatory and self-centered. I think a lot of IWTV fans dwell on the idea of Daniel being some hero of modern journalism because we're told he won two Pulitzers, reports on seemingly progressive issues and therefore is almost like some RBG-style girlboss or something for liberals (side-eye). One of the takeaways for me from the opening in the pilot is to show that Daniel was actually in a pretty low place and was selling himself, in fact, to keep going.  More than that, Daniel's treatment of both fake!Rashid and real!Rashid is another window into who he is as a person and journalist and how he views the people around him - *they're there to give him information, their own vulnerabilities be damned. * (Do people really not understand how wildly unprofessional and gross it was for Daniel to ask a -seemingly young- brown man in Dubai if he's all but a prostitute for his employer on their second meeting??) Other people's stories and information are lifeblood to him because he views their lives as something he can and should have, which is practically a hallmark of mainstream white journalists.

Obviously Louis bears responsibility not only for what happened to Claudia but what letting anyone, let alone someone like Daniel, have access to her personal diaries would mean. But that doesn't absolve Daniel of blame. Louis also still had a say in his story being told - and it's pretty clear that Daniel didn't care about Louis's consent.  Because selling stories is what he does, and definitely without a care for those involved.  It's in his nature, you could say. 

Anyways, Daniel saying in S1 that Claudia's story would be exploited no matter what doesn't absolve him; he could have either not published the book or taken very conscious steps in his own writing to minimize the chances of that. But he didn't - because he's someone who exploits the stories of others (and often his own).  He can't even make the argument many journalists will make about needing to publish for the greater public good. That is not what Daniel publishing the book was about and it wasn't about justice for Claudia or helping Louis heal; for Daniel, it was about himself.