An Open Letter to the Person Who Called Me “A Pile of Human Garbage”
Sorry Not Sorry That We at NOTICE News Report the Truth About Guns, Crime, Poverty and Capitalism and It Makes You Uncomfortable
Last week, I got an email about my startup, NOTICE News, that really threw me for a loop. A viewer of ours was so upset by our content on Snapchat that he felt the need to write us an e-mail, condemning me by name as “a pile of human garbage.”
I bootstrap a startup dedicated to bringing the news to Gen Z through social media, where we have a sizable following. We’ve tried to be “unbiased,” but lately we’ve ditched “unbiased reporting” for simply telling the truth.
This has apparently caused a Mr. Christopher Schmierer a great deal of angst. He writes:
I think Andrew Springer (and anybody who’s working for him) is a pile of human garbage who understands exactly who his vulnerable young audience is, and chooses volatile and political content to put in front of children’s eyes.
You show people getting shot then talk about republicans and democrats… If you don’t understand the political grooming your [sic] doing, look at your actions and try to think.
There’s a concept in Islam about how good deeds that carry on after death have more meaning than just a good deed, like building a hospital. The same concept applies to sin, if you make something like a porn website that ruins peoples lives regardless of you being alive or not, then that sin means far more than a normal sin.
Hopefully something awful happens to Andrew Springer and he dies soon, so that he’ll have to pay for this lazy, pathetic and despicable excuse for “journalism” in hell.
You make me sick. Shut this shit down and spend your newly exploited money on something that benefits society, instead of creating fear, division and hatred, all for ad revenue too. That’s sad.
To be fair, I’m used to criticism and people disliking the truth when they hear it. We get hate tweets and comments all the time. But rarely am I singled out directly, rarely with a personal attack, and rarely with such vitriol.
What would make Christopher Schmierer so upset that he would wish a painful death on a fellow human being, followed by an eternity of punishment? His letter doesn’t give any specific reason, but I can take a wild guess: we tell the truth about guns, crime, poverty, and capitalism.
Because we’re forced to chase algorithms to get viewers and revenue (to simply stay in business, I promise you — nobody is getting rich from NOTICE News), we have to cover what people will click on — and quite often the only thing they click on is crime. A lot of our content is focused on shootings and murders, which is simply a result of the terrible business model American media has been forced into.
Inconvenient Truths
We decided a while ago, however, to do more than just tell you about the news. We want to tell our young audience why these things keep happening. So when we cover violence, we try to remind our audience of inconvenient truths: there are more guns than people in America, more guns lead to more gun deaths, the gun companies are raking in record profits, and Republicans have at every turn not only blocked gun control efforts but have worked, over the objection of law enforcement groups, to expand easy access to guns.
To Christopher Schmierer, this truth telling is “political grooming” worthy of horrific, eternal punishment.
We also try to draw the line between poverty, income inequality, and racism with crime. You may have noticed that random gun violence and gang-related violence doesn’t disrupt daily life in Beverly Hills or Santa Monica or the Upper East Side — the way it does in Compton and Watts and Brownsville. This is not the result of a coincidence or a broken system. This is a racist system doing exactly what it was meant to do: oppress poor people of color, keeping them poor while making the rich richer.
I kid you not — this tweet I got that also calls me out by name shows the kind of push back these basic truths receive from conservatives who have been brainwashed into supporting capitalism:
I’m curious as to what this person thinks is the real problem, if not guns, poverty, or healthcare?
We also tell the truth about Donald Trump and January 6th. It was not an insurrection. It was an attempted, on-going coup. We tell the truth about Ron DeSantis. He’s fascist-leaning, if not a full-on fascist like Trump. Their lies are not mistruths or misleading statements or alternative facts. They are lies plain and simple. To not tell the truth about what they are doing is to lie.
At NOTICE, we’ve transitioned out of trying to be “unbiased” because to claim to not take a side is taking a side. As Elie Wiesel said when accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986:
“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
Because of my faith, I know that this is our duty to do especially because we have such a large following of young viewers. Growing up, my mother, echoing the words of Christ in Luke 12:48, always told us to whom much is given much is expected. We have been given this platform, this opportunity to tell the truth to so many, that we have a moral obligation to do so. To whom much is given, much is expected, and I will fulfill my duty to Christ.
If this makes me a “pile of human garbage” in your eyes, Mr. Schmierer, so be it. I will continue to speak out for the children who have been slaughtered in classrooms while greedy capitalists get filthy rich — even if it makes you uncomfortable.
