It's Fontastic

Character limits and serif-inflicted wounds

WASHINGTON — This month marks my 17th anniversary on social media — a journey that began when, as VOA’s South Asia bureau chief in late November of 2008, Twitter bested India’s sensationalistic cable TV news channels for timely and accurate information about the attacks by Islamic terrorists on civilians at multiple sites in Mumbai (Bombay).

After that, I initially intended to be a mere lurker on Twitter, using the site in a manner akin to a police scanner — listen but verify. Unlike the public service radio receiver, Twitter was a two-way channel I took advantage of, gaining a considerable following for quick, accurate and on-the-scene tweets from elections, protests, civil strife, coups, wars and disasters throughout Asia.

Occasionally I provided context similar to my news reports and linked to my TV and radio stories. The majority of online readers merely perused the headlines Often when I’d crafted something I took great pains to balance it would generate accusations of left-wing bias from the right and simultaneously allegations of a conservative tilt from the left flank. Many of the fervent online are entrenched in their world views, unwilling or unable to review and fairly critique a different point of view. The middle ground is quicksand.

An even-handed journalist or academic on social media must dodge flaming arrows from different directions (many flung by bots and trolls). It is difficult to anticipate when something unbiased and seemingly anodyne will be the catalyst for a furore.

I’m sometimes bemused, often amused, when bare facts posted to social media cause a tizzy.

Folks will read motives into posts that compare one event to another or draw direct lines to ideology or funding. This occurs most frequently on the platform formerly known as Twitter (to which my posts on Mastodon are automatically relayed). I see less of it on Bluesky (an independent refuge for liberals who fled the Elon Musk platform). I also post to the Meta-owned Threads, but there is scant engagement there for the type of content I generate. (Mention Taylor Swift, which I rarely have done, and it’s a different story.)

Infrequently, something I’ll post becomes a news story after going viral or, perhaps, it goes viral because a partisan website has linked to it.

A matter-of-fact post about the historical context for government fonts opened such a vein last week.

I would note that no outlet contacted me for comment, they just lifted from each other. If I was making any statement at all it was that the US government in 2025 was banning a font for being ‘woke’ and Germany in 1941 banned a font for being ‘Jewish.’ You can make your own assessment of historic relevance.

One headline claimed I had thus declared “Marco Rubio Literally Hitler.”

Fox News asserted I was “directly linking the two font initiatives.” Its Murdoch empire sister, New York Post, nine hours later, posted the Fox story verbatim.

The Conservative Journal Project deemed my “#Fontgate” posts worse than silly.

A couple of days later, Newsbusters, a site “exposing and combating liberal media bias” and funded by the Mercer and DeVos families, as well as the foundation named after Adolph Coors, deemed my postings to be more ridiculous than NBC’s analysis that the font change “comes amid a wider push by the Trump administration against diversity, equity and inclusion programs that were embraced by the Biden administration.” (Fact check: True)

Newsbusters discovered my contribution to the discussion from a posting by “justmindy,” a self-described conservative follower of Jesus who lives “on a family compound” in Florida. She writes for the Twitchy website, founded by Michelle Malkin and now owned by Salem Media, which dominates the Christian and conservative talk radio airwaves in America.

I was flattered to see the article’s headline starting with my name, as if ordinary readers know who is Steve Herman. Hopefully it does not harm sales for the My Dragon books author, Steve Herman (no relation).

It is a stretch of the imagination to believe I am a household name in America (my 20+ years as a correspondent for a U.S. government-funded external broadcaster brought some recognition among audiences in Bangladesh or Mali, but not here).

I realize that the oxygen for the lettering foofaraw was supplied by glorified bloggers profiting from clickbait and MAGA ratings-driven news sites intent on maintaining a state of outrage among their audiences (and yes, progressive media outlets have the same strategy).

Most of the resulting digital fan mail (via Twitter and email) hurled insults. It was notable the majority said I was “retarded,” apparently the invective du jour after the president used it during Thanksgiving weekend to insult the governor of Minnesota (whose son has a non-verbal learning disorder).

That such language has quickly migrated from a presidential Air Force One press gaggle to my inbox is a grim marker of the current state of discourse. When the use of slurs becomes a badge of political loyalty, it suggests we have moved beyond mere polarization into something more corrosive.

My role past, present and future: documenting; not appeasing partisans nor sanitizing ugly realities.

Reputable journalists, historians and academics should maintain equanimity, and be cognizant that in this climate, anodyne facts may be considered the most dangerous content of all.