Dear Will,

I was the senior opinion editor at Al Jazeera America and I edited that specific piece. You are totally wrong. In fact, I knew who the real Jeff Jarvis was, I knew who the author of the piece (Rurik Bradbury) was, I knew they were two different people, I knew he published a satirical Twitter account under the name “Prof Jeff Jarvis,” I knew that the account satirized not just Jeff Jarvis but other, similar tech evangelists, and I met with him face to face to discuss the piece. For Pete’s sake, if the GIFs didn’t clue you in, the piece, “Six hot media startups to watch in 2016,” included Al Jazeera America the day before our website closed and we were put out of work. If you can’t get that it was a self-effacing joke — and that everyone reading along with you should realize that it was a joke — I don’t know what to tell you. Our intention was to run a fun satire the day before we closed. I most certainly was not misled, nor did I have any intention of misleading people about the author (the “source of content.”). That’s why it was labelled “humor” and said that it was not written by Jeff Jarvis (with a link to his website).

I would be happy to debate with Jeff Jarvis or whomever else about the ethics of such satire (The legal case is clear: he doesn’t have a leg to stand on.) I take journalistic responsibility very seriously, and I disagree with him about this issue. Unfortunately, Jeff Jarvis blocks whomever doesn’t take his view of things. He obviously has a personal stake in all this, so I can’t totally blame him for not being objective. But I don’t agree with him and that doesn’t make me an irresponsible journalist.