The controversy over Nick Hanauer’s recent TED talk about increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans just isn’t going away. Yesterday, GeekWire and others reported on how Hanauer’s economic talk was not being displayed on the TED Web site.
“My arguments threaten an economic orthodoxy and political structure that many powerful people have a huge stake in defending,” wrote Hanauer in an email to GeekWire.
Now, TED curator Chris Anderson is firing back, unleashing a 664-word torrent against the Seattle venture capitalist for intentionally sparking the controversy by sending emails about the decision not to run the talk to The National Journal. Anderson called the “story so misleading it would be funny… except it successfully launched an aggressive online campaign against us.”
He continues:
“A non-story about a talk not being chosen, because we believed we had better ones, somehow got turned into a scandal about censorship. Which is like saying that if I call the New York Times and they turn down my request to publish an op-ed by me, they’re censoring me.”
Meanwhile, Anderson — who said they are contemplating putting their entire video archive online — has gone ahead and posted the full talk from Hanauer.
Writes Anderson: “No doubt it will now, ironically, get stupendous viewing numbers and spark a magnificent debate, and then the conspiracy theorists will say the whole thing was a set-up!”