Jim Acosta Should Never Work in Journalism Again
By 
What in the living holy fuck is this?
Jim Acosta, former chief White House correspondent for CNN, stirred controversy on Monday when he sat for a conversation with a reanimated version of a person who died more than seven years ago. His guest was an avatar of Joaquin Oliver, one of the 17 people killed in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, in 2018.
The video shows Oliver, captured via a real photograph and animated with generative artificial intelligence, wearing a beanie with a solemn expression. Acosta asks the avatar: “What happened to you?”
“I appreciate your curiosity,” Oliver answers in hurried monotone without inflection or pauses for punctuation. “I was taken from this world too soon due to gun violence while at school. It’s important to talk about these issues so we can create a safer future for everyone.” The avatar’s narration is stilted and computerized. The movements of its face and mouth are jerky and unnatural, looking more like a dub-over than an actual person talking.
Oliver was 17 years old when he was shot and killed in the hallway of Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school. According to Since Parkland, a reporting project about the victims of the shooting, the teenager loved writing and came to school that day, Valentine’s Day, with flowers for his girlfriend. He would have been 25 on Monday.
Acosta had teased the interview on social media saying it would be a “show you don’t want to miss” and a “one of a kind interview”. The former correspondent now describes himself as an independent journalist and posts content on a Substack blog after parting ways with CNN in January.
I recognize that we live in an era when morals are dead. And I recognize that we live in an era when mainstream journalism is at a nadir. This manages to reach new levels of outright immorality and somehow take journalism into a new depth of Hell. The kid’s parents were OK with it, and I am not going to criticize how people deal with unmentionable grief. But this is like taking the grift of late 19th century spiritualism and turning into a public spectacle for the nation to watch. It’s revolting and it should lead to Acosta being blacklisted.