Comments by "Johnny Harris" (@johnnyharris) on "Tom Nicholas" channel.

Hey there so I finally watched your video. You raise some strong points (I had only seen the thumbnail when someone sent it to me and figured it was a conspiracy theory about me.) I’m deleting my original comment cuz it’s snarky and undermining. Not warranted for what seems like a well constructed set of arguments against my WEF video. You raise useful points about ethics and journalism in a YouTube context. The short answer to your concerns is that 1. I may not agree with you on where the ethical line is in journalism and working with think tanks to tell stories I feel are compelling. And 2. The video I made with the WEF was the product of me having read a pre order copy of the book (cuz I like books like this) and pitching the WEF on sponsoring a video on the topic of the duck graph. They agreed. I made the video. They didn’t write the script. They didn’t see the script. They didn’t have any creative or editorial influence in the work. They did really solid research and analysis for their book and I wanted to make a video that unpacked it. I think it’s reasonable if you disagree with my decision. But I feel comfortable having done this work. Overall, I’m impressed with your writing and presentation skills in this vid. Well researched and connecting useful dots to make your point. You have a new sub!
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@Tom_Nicholas my biggest critique of this whole discourse is that I haven’t heard someone engage with the actual content of my explanation. I spent loads of time sifting thru data and literature reviews of wonky journal papers to craft my understanding of income distribution over the past 35 years. I want a debate on THAT. The thrust of my argument. One that yes piggy backs off the work of a Swiss think tank but one that I nonetheless find compelling. I commend your work on unpacking the morphing realities of journalism on YouTube but I worry that writing something off as propaganda based on who paid for it can serve as a weak proxy for actually engaging with evidence and arguments. Just another point to add to the discussion I suppose.
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@Tom_Nicholas hmmm this thread is becoming quite a mess. Not sure anyone on earth with see this comment so late but I love discourse and debate so I’ll respond regardless. -no this wasn’t coincidence. Peter and I have been DMing on Twitter for years about someday working together on something. He’s a journalist like me and he told me about his book coming out and I said I’d love to take a look and maybe make an explainer based off the research. I read the book. Thought it was well argued and had some solid data that I could make into a video. Asked Peter if he wanted to sponsor a video I could make about it and he said yes. I liked the data and analysis. I made a video about it. The blog post was an adaptation of the script I wrote. I sent it to Peter after the video was done so he could adapt for the site. I guess I was thinking about SEO? didn’t click the “includes paid promotion” tab because I forgot lol. I have an assistant who publishes most of my videos. He always remembers to click the box. I never do basically out of habit. I started on YouTube long before all these guidelines. As our good friend Tom Scott notes, no other news media is required to do this but Youtubers do. At the end of the day I’m not trying to hide anything. I get why you wouldn’t like that I made this video. I appreciate your interrogation of what journalism should be. It’s healthy. But what challenges my ethics are the big lap top sponsors that come to throw money at me to make stuff. Or YouTube itself asking me to promote their platform (which I’m comfortable doing as of now) Not the WEF. These corporations think about nothing but profit. They will be the ones to chip away at my integrity. Not an organization going out and collecting and analyzing interesting macro economic data. Ok that’s all I’ve got for now. Keep it up!
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