Michael C. Moynihan

Michael C. Moynihan is an American journalist and the cultural news editor for The Daily Beast/Newsweek and formally the managing editor of Vice magazine. Before that he was a senior editor of the libertarian magazine Reason. He was a resident fellow of the free-market think tank, Timbro. Moynihan lived in Sweden and wrote articles about politics in the country, contributing to Swedish-language publications, including Expressen, Aftonbladet, Sveriges Television, Neo and Göteborgs-Tidningen.

Education

Moynihan graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history.^[1]

Career

Sweden

Moynihan founded the Stockholm Spectator, an English-language website based in Stockholm, Sweden.^[2] According to Sveriges Radio, the site was originally intended to be a print publication modeled on The Village Voice.^[2] Writers were mainly English-speaking expatriates living in Sweden.^[2] "Despite the fact that so many Swedes speak and read in English there were almost no English-language newspapers in Sweden," said Moynihan to Sveriges Radio in 2004.^[2] It maintained a focus on criticism of the media, but also dealt with current topics in politics and music.^[2] Moynihan began serving on the editorial board of the Swedish magazine Neo in 2006 along with Peter Wolodarski and Theodore Paues. Swedish politician Carl Bildt sat on the board of the publication.^[3]

During a controversy in 2006 where the website SD-Kuriren was criticized by the Swedish Minister of Foreign Affairs Laila Freivalds for publishing satires of the Prophet Muhammad of Islam, the website was taken down by its provider.^[4] As editor of the Stockholm Spectator, Moynihan reacted to what he viewed as suppression of freedom of the press, and posted to the blog of the magazine one of the more offensive of the caricatures of Muhammad.^[4] He was a resident fellow at the organization Timbro, a free-market think tank based in Stockholm.^[1][5] He lived in Sweden and wrote articles about the politics of the country.^[6] Moynihan has contributed articles to Swedish-language publications, including Expressen, Aftonbladet, Sveriges Television, Neo, and Göteborgs-Tidningen.^[1] Moynihan was the producer of a 2006 documentary for Modern Times Group of Sweden's TV8, on American conservative radio talk show host Barry Farber.^[1] He performed research for Timbro in 2007 in which he wrote critically of Noam Chomsky's research methods, and argued that Chomsky did not deserve an honorary doctorate he received at Uppsala University.^[7]

Washington, D.C.

He became associate editor at Reason in 2007, and was a contributor to the Los Angeles Times in 2008. After censorship by Comedy Central of an episode of South Park in 2010 that featured a depiction of the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad, Moynihan announced his support for the protest movement, "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day".

Moynihan was an associate editor for Reason prior to serving as its senior editor,^[8] having joined the staff of the magazine in August 2007.^[9] His December 24, 2007, article for Reason, "Flunking Free Speech: The Persistent Threat to Liberty on College Campuses" was cited by Robert H. Jackson Legal Fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, Azhar Majeed, in the legal journal The Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy in 2009.^[10] Moynihan was a contributor to the Los Angeles Times in 2008.^[11][12] After Barack Obama was elected President of the United States in November 2008, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution highlighted critical comments by Moynihan of the President-Elect's supporters, in a sample of political viewpoints following the election.^[13] He conducted interviews for Reason.tv in 2009.^[14] In 2010, he was a visiting fellow at Timbro.^[1] Moynihan is the senior editor of both Reason magazine, as well as its website, Reason.com.^[1][15] He resided in Washington, D.C. in 2010.^[1]

Moynihan announced his participation in the protest movement "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" which began in May 2010.^[16] The movement grew in response to censorship by Comedy Central of an episode of South Park which depicted the Prophet Muhammad.^[16] Moynihan stated he would post his own contributions in addition to submissions from other individuals to the website of Reason on the protest movement's scheduled date of May 20, 2010.^[16] He encouraged his readers to send him their drawings.^[17] Moynihan stated he planned to select some of his favorite depictions of Muhammad from the protest movement, and then add them to the Reason.com website.^[17][18] Moynihan commented, "In the South Park episode that started all this, Buddha does lines of coke and there was an episode where Cartman started a Christian rock band that sang very homo-erotic songs. Yet there is one religious figure we can't make fun of. The point of the episode that started the controversy is that celebrities wanted Muhammad's power not to be ridiculed. How come non-Muslims aren't allowed to make jokes?"^[18] Moynihan noted, "Any time you cave into terrorism, it emboldens extremists," and posited that the decision of Comedy Central to enact self-censorship of the South Park episode would have the impact of worsening the situation.^[18]

Jonah Lehrer resignation

On July 30, 2012, a Moynihan article which appeared in Tablet Magazine, showing evidence that New Yorker writer Jonah Lehrer had fabricated Bob Dylan quotations, led to Lehrer's resignation.^[19][20][21]

See also

• Libertarianism in the United States
• Political blog
• Politics of Sweden
• The Huffington Post

References

Further reading

• Moynihan, Michael C. (September 20, 2006). "Sweden's Politics of Perssonal Destruction". Reason (reason.com).  (earliest article at Reason)

External links

• Moynihan's Columns at The Daily Beast/Newsweek
• Moynihan at Reason
• Michael C. Moynihan at the Internet Movie Database