Time for journalists to embrace Godwin’s Law

Godwin’s law is the observation, dating to the early nineties, which states that as a “discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.”

A second tenet of the law is that “whoever mentions the Nazis has automatically lost whatever debate was in progress.”

So here’s my entirely presumptuous advice to newsrooms. Whenever someone in a crowd or on a podium invokes the brownshirts or the Fuhrer, shut off the cameras.

That person has self-identified as someone incapable of thinking in interesting and productive ways about complicated issues that we face.

So I’m going to offer a new, third tenet:

Media outlets lose credibility in direct proportion to the number of broadcasts they air involving people who violate Godwin’s law.