(Optional soundtack for this email: Lizzo’s “Truth Hurts”)
ukraine update
Since Volodymyr Zelensky was inaugurated as Ukraine’s sixth president on May 20, he has dissolved parliament and called early elections for July 21, visited the EU and NATO, and begun to make appointments to his team. The head of the new Presidential Administration is none other than oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky’s personal lawyer, and Zelensky’s bodyguards are also from Kolomoisky’s orbit.
The appointment that made the most waves in the West, however, was that of his new spokesperson, Iuliia Mendel.
Mendel previously worked as a consultant for the World Bank, as well as a stringer and fixer for The New York Times. For those not familiar with journalist-speak, this means she was an industrious, English-speaking Ukrainian who could get on-the-ground insight when the Times didn’t have a correspondent in Ukraine; when it did, she would travel with that person, acting as interpreter, organizer, and local resource.
She shared a byline with Ken Vogel on the recent Times report on Hunter Biden’s murky connections in Ukraine, and this is what set “Resistance Twitter” frothing at the mouth when her appointment was announced. All week, prominent figures with tens of thousands of followers insinuated that Mendel had been appointed as Zelensky’s spokesperson as some sort of quid pro quo for her work on the Biden story; they couldn’t be more wrong.
Here are a few facts. They are boring. They are detailed. They are a very not-hot take:
The Vogel-Mendel story claimed that as Vice President, Joe Biden lobbied for the removal of a corrupt official who was investigating the company for which Hunter Biden was consulting. (I’m not linking to the piece here because I and most people with a lick of experience in Ukraine think it was not well constructed and was generally quite misleading about Ukraine’s anti-corruption fight and Joe Biden’s role in it.) “Resistance” Twitter and most Democrats were angry at the Times for running the story and feeding Trump’s narrative of “Ukraine collusion,” which, in reality, does not exist. I agree with the Resistance” that the story was poor, but as a stringer, Mendel herself likely had little to do with the way the story shook out.
The story was published just as the vacancy for spokesperson, for which Zelensky held an open online contest, was announced. Many on Twitter were claiming that the story presented a “conflict of interest” for the Times. I’m not sure how that conflict of interest exists if the reporter in question hadn’t yet even considered applying for the position.
The narrative of a Times-Mendel cabal also assumes that the story was a boon for Mendel’s application to the spox job; in fact, it was likely a detriment to it. The attention that the Times story placed on Ukraine encouraged President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to briefly consider a trip to Ukraine to further “investigate” Biden’s purported dirty dealings. He decided to cancel the trip after it was clear that the Zelensky team wasn’t keen to meet with him, then called the new Ukrainian administration “enemies of POTUS.” To claim that Zelensky has somehow benefited from the Biden story is utter nonsense; instead, it has put his relationship with the most powerful man in the world on the rocks.
Besides this byline, into which I assume Mendel had little input or editorial oversight, based on her freelance status, she has also reported interesting features like this one about the abuse of women in the Ukrainian military, which are none too kind to the government. This is a person who wants her country to be better. I met Mendel briefly when we were both reporting from Zelensky’s hometown, Kryvyi Rih, in April. She struck me as ambitious, smart, level-headed, and resourceful. In short: exactly the type of public servant Ukraine needs.
Finally, for every media commentary pundit who is up in arms about Mendel joining the government from journalism, this is common practice in Ukraine, and moreover, is hardly something that doesn’t happen in the West. Samantha Power, Obama’s UN Ambassador, and Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s Foreign Minister, are two former journalists who have gone into high-level public service. There are tons more working as speechwriters, spokespeople, and policy advisors all over government. Sure, they may not make their switch to the public sector as hastily as Mendel did. To that I say: welcome to Ukraine. To assume that Mendel might have immediately informed her employers about a 1 in 4000 chance she had at getting a job as spokesperson for the new president is ludicrous.
new from me
Last month I published a piece in the Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo’s Illustrisima magazine laying out how Facebook has become the Internet in a lot of developing nations (including Ukraine and Brazil), and arguing that quitting the social network is a privilege millions of people literally can't afford to enjoy. It’s in Portuguese, so I slapped the English version up on Medium for your reading pleasure:
Despite Facebook and other social media platforms’ public remonstrations that they are changing their behavior, we could not be farther from that online democratic utopia, and my criticism continues. I am often in good company, as social media users are becoming more aware of their rights and the platforms’ negligence for them. Lately, though, my public disapproval has been met with a unique chorus of pseudo-wise men, eager to inform me that yes, of course, Facebook is bad! But why didn’t I realize that sooner? The pseudo-wise man usually goes on to inform me that he had the foresight to delete Facebook years ago. Bravo to the pseudo-wise men of the global west and north for their apparent foresight. What they don’t realize, however, is their very ability to delete their Facebook accounts and their audacity to brag about it is not only coming from a place of supposed intellectual superiority, but one of privilege. For millions of people outside of North America and Western Europe, Facebook, quite simply, is the Internet. Deleting it is tantamount to throwing your phone into the nearest body of water and retreating to the dark depths of the forest to begin your life as a hermit.
Read the rest of the piece here.
book club
I am in a deep non-fiction groove right now (perhaps to feed my manuscript-writing motivation?). Here’s what I’m reading:
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startupby John Carreyrou: This book was recommended to me for ages and I finally picked it up at the airport a few weeks ago. I got through about a third of it on my flight home from Europe, which is saying something considering there were movies, wine, and sleep to distract me. It’s just as compelling and instructive about start-up culture as everyone says it is.
Finding My Voice: My Journey to the West Wing and the Path Forward by Valerie Jarrett: I got to see Jarrett, a close friend of the Obamas’ and former White House official, speak last week. I found her so authentic that I paid double list price to buy her book, which I’m a couple of chapters into. Jury’s still out on whether that price is worth it, but her story is fascinating and inspiring so far.
Next up: The Twenty-Six Words that Created the Internetby Jeff Kosseff: This book explores the origin, history, and future of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which is the document that gives social media platforms (and other Internet “intermediaries”) limited liability for the content their users create and post. As Congress begins to look more seriously at Big Tech regulation, we can expect to see Section 230 brought up again and again, so I’ll be reading this (with an unlimited supply of coffee around) to get a more nuanced view than “Big Tech bad! Regulation good!”
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