Are you what you tweet? Trevor Noah says no, but controversy goes on
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Molly Jackson Staff
Fans of "The Daily Show" are waiting for Monday, September 28 with bated breath: That's the day that late-night South African comedian Trevor Noah, 31, will take the helm of Comedy Central鈥檚 wildly popular satirical news show.
Over 16 years, and 21 Emmy awards, former host Jon Stewart transformed the program: no longer seen as "just" humor, it鈥檚 now ,聽for better or worse, and a 鈥渃ultural institution,鈥� as Molly Driscoll wrote in 海角大神. So what is Mr. Noah doing to fill those shoes?
Scrutinizing his staff鈥檚 social media, for one. In an interview published this week ,聽Noah says his employees went through all potential correspondents鈥� posts on a hunt for anything potentially troublesome, i.e. offensive.
It鈥檚 an issue Noah knows all too well. After Mr. Stewart announced his relatively little-known heir last spring, viewers sprang to their laptops to research the next host. Despite performing stand-up around the world, Noah had only appeared on "The Daily Show" three times before suddenly being given the reins. Among fans鈥� discoveries were several tweets that might be considered sexist or anti-Semitic, such as聽
The tongue-lashing began immediately. Some critics weighing in deemed the tweets problematic, while others simply said . But Noah, Stewart, and Comedy Central Noah should be allowed to 鈥渆arn your trust and respect, or not,鈥� Stewart urged, 鈥渏ust as I earned your trust and respect, or did not.鈥澛�
Amid the 鈥渒ertuffle,鈥� as Stewart called it, Noah protested that people should pay attention to who he had become, not 140 characters he鈥檇 typed years ago. As he tells Mr. Itzkoff,
People go, "Trevor, you should clean your tweets.鈥� I go, I cleaned my life 鈥� I tried to grow as a human being. Someone goes, 鈥淵eah, but you wrote this in 2009.鈥� I go, well, thank God I didn鈥檛 write it in 2015. That to me is progress.
For activists and reporters who rely on the freedom of information, the Internet鈥檚 disinclination to help hide any embarrassing personal tidbits, or full-blown scandals, is a blessing. But for privacy advocates, or all those who feel misrepresented or humiliated when they Google their names, it can be a curse, no matter how much 鈥減rogress,鈥� as Noah calls it, they鈥檝e made since.
But perhaps not for long. Thanks to a European court case, "A huge and unwieldy eraser is coming for Google results across the globe,鈥� .听
Last year, the Court of Justice of the European Union forced Google to let private Internet users if no longer accurate or relevant: subjective criteria indeed for the so-called 鈥渞ight to be forgotten."聽Although freedom of information champions decried the tool as censorship, revealed that 95 percent of requests do come from individuals, rather than powerful people or institutions. The law doesn鈥檛 erase websites, merely the link appearing when a name is searched on a country-specific European Google site, like Google.fr or Google.co.uk.听
But that wasn鈥檛 enough to appease the Court of Justice, which wants the search engine to also honor the removals on the worldwide Google.com page 鈥� a move Google is protesting.
Will the click of a button one day disguise all those ill-advised Facebook posts, self-indulgent selfies, and regrettable online rants? Perhaps. But for now, it's still wise to think before you tweet.
