Conor Friedersdorf

Conor Friedersdorf is an American journalist and an staff writer at The Atlantic. He lives in Venice California.[1]

Controversial quote

On October 14, 2011, Conor Friedersdorf wrote an article for The Atlantic criticizing the Occupy Wall Street Movement for focusing on the “symbolic Wall Street” instead of the “actual Wall Street”. The article had the following quote.[2]

"Much easier to decide that it's wrong to create a mortgage-backed security filled with loans you know are going to fail so that you can sell it to a client who isn't aware that you sabotaged it by intentionally picking the misleadingly rated loans most likely to be defaulted upon”

On October 15, 2011, free lance journalist Caitlin Curran held a sign at the Occupy Wall Street protest in Times Square that had an excerpt of this quote. A picture of her holding the sign (see right) was taken and posted on Twitter. The picture received notoriety and Caitlin proposed a story to her contract employer, radio station WNYC for a show she was editor on, The Takeaway.[3] The next day she was fired by WNYC because “When Ms. Curran made the decision to participate in the protest and make herself part of the story, she violated our editorial standards.”[4]

Forbes magazine has observed that the quote has “taken on a life of it's own”.[5]

The Philadelphia Daily News has used the quote as an illustration that the Occupy Wall Street movement is the first one to come with a “syllabus and a reading list”.[6]

References

  1. ^ Conor bio header for "Occupy Wall Street's Greatest Strength Is Neutering It", The Atlantic, October 14, 2011
  2. ^ Conor Friedersdorf, “Occupy Wall Street's Greatest Strength Is Neutering It”, The Atlantic, October 14, 2011
  3. ^ Caitlin E. Curran, “How Occupy Wall Street Cost Me My Job”, Gawker, October 28, 2011
  4. ^ Adam Clark Estes and Dino Grandoni, “Another Public Radio Freelancer Gets the Ax Over Occupy Wall Street”, The Atlantic, October 28, 2011
  5. ^ Christopher Faille, “Don't Blame Goldman Sachs For Hedging Its Bets and Staying In Business”, Forbes magazine, October 18, 2011
  6. ^ Gary Thompson “'Margin Call' takes different view of a firm's failure”, Philadelphia Daily News, October 20, 2011

External links