The Most Trusted Man on the Internet with Phil Lewis

In an era where the rush to break news often trumps the responsibility to be accurate, Phil Lewis has built a following being right. But who's the guy behind the picture we've all come to recognize?

Phil: There's a sort of insane rush to be first because that is sort of how you build credibility, right? Very first thing I learned was that it's way better to be right than first, but unfortunately that's something that, that's a journalism cornerstone that people aren't, are not necessarily learning or don't even care about. Or they don't really care because this is just social media or whatever. But these things have real world ramifications….

Rhian: Hello and welcome back to another episode of That Can't Be Right, a podcast about exploring structural wrongs, cultural oddities, and wild opinions. I'm your host, Rhian Rogan. Quick and dirty housekeeping. Follow along at TCBRPod on Instagram and Substack for the latest and greatest. Technically, I'm also on TikTok, Twitter, and Threads, but y'all it's just me and I only have so many things to say.

So, Instagram and Substack for sure. 

This episode of That Can’t Be Right is dedicated to my perpetually online fans. There is a profile picture. It is a selfie of a good looking black man with a goatee looking into a camera as he stands in front of some trees in a building and buildings on a sunny day. 

That selfie has become a symbol for many of us of trustworthy fact-based news, and a dumpster fire of misinformation on a half functioning platform that I needed to access today and was broken once again.

But that selfie belongs to Phil Lewis, my guest today. He's a Senior Front Page Editor at HuffPost. From Detroit. Phil, welcome to That Can't Be Right. 

Phil:Thank you. That was an excellent intro. Love it. 

Rhian: Perfect, perfect, perfect. And we're gonna talk more about that profile picture, but really glad you're here. Really glad you were able to find time. 

Phil: For sure. 

Rhian So we're talking, because I feel like your Twitter account, maybe other platforms, and we’ll  get to those as well, has become just such a source of like, okay, if he tweets it, I know it's, it's good to go. I know it's factual, I know it's been vetted or I know it's important if it wasn't a story that had reached my feed before. 

Before we get to how that came to be, can you tell me a little bit more about your background? I know you have kind of a nontraditional path in journalism. How'd you get here? 

Phil: I got to HuffPost in 2015 after. Kind of odd stints here and there. I used to teach, I was a substitute teacher for a bit.

I worked at the University of Michigan Dental School for a little bit. I was kind of just all over the place looking for different roles, but a friend of mine was like, hey, you should get into social media, or something in that realm, because you are this teacher with like 30,000 followers on Twitter. You're just kinda just sharing things that people need to know. Why don't you actually utilize your platform for a career? 

So I applied for a bunch of different internships, fellowships. Obviously I got rejected by most of them because I had no experience. I did not go to journalism school. People tend to shy away from people without that sort of background.

 But HuffPost took a shot on me in 2015. Amanda Terkel, who I owe my career. She was just like why do you want to do this? I'm trying something new. I want to, I'm here to learn basically. And people don't realize, journalism is a trade, right? It's something that can be taught, but something you learn, it doesn't matter if you went to Columbia University for journalism or if you’re like me and didn't go to school at all. You can learn how to do it. 

You can learn the ethics and what you need to know to pursue this field. So that's kinda how I landed. I've been here with HuffPost since 2015,  had a brief stint at Mic.com, Mic, a millennial based news outlet, was there for about a year, and then I came back to HuffPost.

Rhian: You mentioned you got to HuffPost in 2015. What was it like, to your point, learning a trade on the job, ramping up to the 2016 election?

Phil: My career has never had a dull moment. Like people speak about dull moments or like,  I know back when we used to be able to just kind of relax and chill, my career has never really had a dull moment because I started my career in the middle of, kind of like the Trump campaign as it was ramping up, as you say. So it's always been just a whirlwind, like ever since Trump kinda stepped on the scene, things have just been “Wow”. Right. So it was really a whirlwind. I had to learn everything about the field on the job.

Right. So I didn't even know what the Inverted Pyramid was. Which is, if you’re familiar with journalism, when you're writing for news, you want the most important piece at the top.

That's the lowest inverted pyramid. I mean, these are things like you were learning, in Journalism 101, somewhere at some random school, but I had to learn on that, on the job. So it was, it was really rough. 

I think one of the hardest things about it was really just not being good at something, you know, or, or really just sucking at it, you know?

Rhian: Yeah. 

Phil: For, for a while. And then, you obviously, you deal with the imposter syndrome or like, should I even really be here right now or is this what I should even be doing? Sticking with it was the best decision in my life I'd say.

Rhian: That's amazing. I think as we grow up, we hit an age where we are not comfortable sucking at things like it's, I'm not what I gotta do, what?

I gotta look goofy. No, I'm not gonna do it. And then you come, you reach an age later where you're like, okay, I am willing to. Look silly, look goofy, not know things when I step into a room. So I'm glad you were, you were willing to do that and like were able to keep the imposter syndrome at bay long enough to continue to succeed in your career.

How do you think it's influenced your career that you didn't go to journalism school, that you don't have those built-in biases? And then on the flip side, was it challenging to put on the journalist hat and remove yourself? Or your perspective when you were reporting?

Phil:  to answer your first question.

I think that when we think about, let's say, groupthink or whatever, it looks a lot different ways, right? So, you can be black and go to Columbia or I'm like crapping on Columbia right now, but like, it's a great school. But, I'm just thinking about schools that are pretty prominent. So like the journalism school at University of Maryland, like a lot of these schools are focusing on a lot of the same sorts of figures tend to be the Ivy League upper class. You know, people that are, that are focused that, that all sort of just have kind of one, kind of one band, one sound sort of thing when it comes to what they cover. And I think coming from, you know, a state university, and then also not coming from journalism at all, I majored in sociology.

And so I'd say the study of people and the study of trends really has helped me think about what I cover as well. I think that’s made me stand out in a way because I'm looking for stories that the average, maybe the average journalist is not always attuned to or looking for.

So that's helped me, uh, quite a bit. And then sort of to your second question, uh, which was, 

Rhian: I, I guess removing, removing, oh, uh, removing yourself from the story. 

Phil: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, let's see. So what, what I enjoy about HuffPost is that we don't have, we don't subscribe to the myth of objectivity, right?

Rhian: Mm-hmm. 

Phil: To where, ok, we just straight down the middle. And that's just how it's always been. And that's actually not how it's always been. Right? 

Rhian: Right. 

Phil: That's actually not how it's always been. Journalism has always been covered and focused from a very, sort of very narrow, very white, male dominated sort perspective.And that's not objective at all I'd say. 

You know where HuffPost stands, and that's why I've been here so long because we don't have to sort of pretend about what we cover, what we think, what we think is important to cover, and the communities that we wanna uplift and that we wanna share and shed light on.

So that's something that is really important to me. I mean, the story is not about, obviously the story's not about the journalists. 

Rhian: Right. 

Phil: Which is why I'm like, I'm always, I definitely love all of the responses about what I do, but like, but we're not the story. I think the story is always about the people and the things that I'm sharing, which is way more important.

Rhian: Thank you. No, I, and I think you do a great job of it. I know when I come to your page, I know your perspective, but it's also never about you, and you also share the information you need as opposed to vague information about - A disaster in this vague region that might have impacted some people, which are some headlines that I see so. Much, much, much appreciation for, for your work.

Before we jump to your work, what's your relationship with, or what has been your relationship with social media? You mentioned you had 30,000 followers, you were already sharing the news, like how did you arrive at the idea, the decision that I can use this platform to disseminate information to uplift communities that matter to me?

Phil: Great question. So when I was in college, I was a member of the Black Student Alliance at Michigan State. And when I was there a student, unfortunately, she had some person write, no N words here, on their whiteboard, in their dorm room. So that when she let people know about it, we kind of sprung into action.

We created this hashtag called, #MSUBlackStudentUnity, I think it was. It's been so long now. Yeah. But we created a hashtag basically and we used that hashtag to spread awareness. And this is before actually, I mean, before even Black Lives Matter became a hashtag, we were using the hashtag to spread awareness just on our campus.

And we also saw that the local news was actually interested in what we were doing, and they found out about us by looking at social media. So I think those are sort of like the origins of how we tend to like, well, how I tend to view social media,  as a platform that we can use to get information out quickly and without a filter, right?

Because if the news that covered it, you know, they cover it their way, but also we don't have, we can cut out the middleman. Get our information out there how we liked. So we wanted to get our demands out there. We had demands, one of the demands was for a freestanding multicultural center, which is now, actually, they've just broken ground on it this year.

That's progress, right? That is really how I was using social media then. We were using it to kinda talk with each other on campus. You know, we were throwing parties. It was just a way for us to talk with each other. But I would say after that incident, that's really how I kind of was like, okay, we can use social media in a way that to reach people I never even thought I would've. I can reach somebody in Europe, you know? Being from Detroit, that's not even someplace that's, that's this far away land, right? 

Rhian: Yeah. 

Phil: Right. But like now, social media has made it so that I can speak with somebody in South Africa today if I wanted to.

So that's, that's kind of how I view social media and that's how I was able to kinda grow it. Cause I continued to share news and stories and things that I found interesting. And then, and then obviously Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, all of these things I'm seeing and I'm sharing it out cause I feel like I'm obligated to do it now that people are coming to my page to see those sorts of things.

Rhian: How do you manage that feeling of obligation? 

Phil: Somebody just asked me this question. I mean, it's definitely an obligation as a Black journalist because we're responsible for sort of telling our own stories and stories that are of importance to us. I don't really, I can't, obviously, I can't share everything, so I just, I toss that aside.

I can't get to everything. Um, I try to share as much as I can and I can sleep knowing I try the best I can. There's only so much I can really do and I think coming to groups with that, I had to come to groups with that very early kinda in my career. Even when the protests of like George Floyd, when those were happening, I couldn't get to every single, couldn't cover every single protest.

But we can only do what we can. There's obviously this broad lack of support that Black journalists who are at like these sort of larger platforms, we just don't always have the same sort of resources and support that we need.

So I just try to share what I can and just go from there. 

Rhian: I was wondering about that. I was wondering how you come to terms with managing all that's going on. So I'm glad you realized and came to terms the earlier in your career, like that you can't do everything. You do have to sleep. So glad you're, you're finding ways to take care of yourself and hope that you and other journalists continue to get the support they need within these organizations, depending on how possible it is.

But do you think that the way you've built your audience, the way you've built this, I'm putting in air quotes, relationship with your followers is replicable to someone who is starting an account today on Twitter, on Bluesky, wherever. 

Phil: I think it is much more difficult today because people, oh my goodness, there's so many different reasons why it's so difficult.

And obviously, the main reason number one is because Twitter is kind of losing its cultural, like cache, I guess. Relevance, that's number one. But you can, obviously, you can build what I've, what I've done on places like TikTok or other platforms. But I think what's important to realize is that, and there's a really great piece in the Atlantic about this, but we're all just sort of renting space online.

If Twitter disappears tomorrow, I mean, I'd, I'd be fine cause I'm still luckily employed at HuffPost. I'm still able to get whatever I need to get out there, I can, I will find a way to get it out there. But we're all sort of just renting space as journalists, as people that use social media.

We're all renting space from these billionaire babies basically, who like to just kind of take, who take all this, who take social media and, and just do whatever they want with it. So it's, it's replicable, but you kinda have to find out what your, what your voice is. And also, where is the best place for you to use that voice?

For me it is text based, platforms like Twitter, like Threads, like Spoutible. I'm on all of it. Now at this point, I'm on all of it. You know, I experiment with TikTok and all these other things like my newsletter and all these different things. So I'm experimenting with different things, which I encourage people to do because you never know.

Like somebody can buy up some other platform and it'll be gone. It's for Twitter specifically, it's replicable. It's just much, much harder because you have people that are - you have the person that bought Twitter that's actively going against it. That seems to be actively going against it's success for some reason.

It’s replicable. Just kinda have to find that audience. 

Rhian: Let's talk about Twitter some more, and hopefully this will be a fun walk down memory lane. You've been on Twitter according to your profile while it's working since 2011. What have been some of your favorite moments on Twitter?

Because before 2020, 2021, when the transaction went through with Elon, it was the online public square. Anything happened, that's where people went. I won't cloud your judgment, but what, what have been some of your favorite Twitter moments over the last 12 years at this point? 

Rhian: Oh, so, uh, the one that comes to mind obviously is N-word Navy.

You know that one, that's the one. Well, because I was online when that happened. 

Rhian: Mm-hmm. 

Phil: I think that happened like in the evening and I was kinda just already paying attention and I saw this, the best part about it was that whoever had tweeted it, and obviously somebody has scheduled it advance, which is why you always need to be very careful if you're scheduling tweets out in advance.

Rhian: Yeah. 

Phil: When someone signs off, that's it. So they left, so the tweet was just up and it, this is from like Yahoo Finance, you know, one of Yahoo's verticals or whatever. And they said Trump had asked for a much bigger Navy, but obviously they, you know, typo with bigger, and then just, oh, Twitter, that was like, hands down, one of the funniest and most unique sort of like experiences online, because everybody had some jokes to get in. Everyone was active. I think people were sending it to other people like, hey, log on. You gotta see these jokes. You gotta share these jokes. So it was just, it was a very sort of communal experience, I think.

Rhian: Yeah. 

Phil: And I don't think they, I don't think Yahoo financed deleted it until like hours later. So the damage was just way done. 

Rhian: Yeah

Phil: Because it was just, it was just up. But that was hilarious. Also, another moment I think was the Temecula. 

Rhian: Oh, yeah. 

Phil: Yeah. So some guy was trying to fight this other guy because, What they, I don't even, what they talking, 

Rhian: I think they were arguing about Kobe.

Phil: Yeah. I think they were arguing about Kobe. It's like, you wanna come to Temecula? Like, uh, yeah. Which is some random city in California, I think. Do you wanna come out here? 

Rhian: Yeah. I lived in LA at the time and I was like, where, what? Like where is this place? We're getting real specific. 

Phil: Yes. But now it's like the city that no one knew about before is now known for this very viral moment. Yeah. So those were, I think those were like two.

Rhian: I'll chime in with two and if you're listening, feel free to chime in with your own. But two of my favorites were the premonition warning, prophecy that Black people were gonna get superpowers. 

Phil: Mm, great one. Great one. 

Rhian: That was a good day. And everybody saying what their superpowers they were hoping to get, and then when they didn’t get their superpowers, that was my favorite.

And then another one I remember. And I remember missing out on it and being devastated. Someone leaked like a 75% off code for Ralph Lauren. And this is when Black people, Black men in particular, lived in Ralph Lauren Polo's and the caps. 

Phil: Yes. 

Rhian: And I just remember being too broke to take part and just watching everybody be like, Ooh, look what I just ordered, screenshots, confirmations just like dang. And I don't know if any of the other platforms as we're talking about them. I don't know if any of the other platforms will have those moments or like, are set up to have those moments yet. But I'm looking forward to it. I hope somebody does and we can get on and all talk about should this man pay for his step children's happy meals? Are you using a washcloth to take a bath? Like all those conversations happened on Twitter and it would always be so weird to someone else. You know, go touch grass and talk to someone who isn't perpetually online and be like, oh, did you see Temecula and they're like, what are you, whatcha talking about? Are you having a stroke? Like, what's going on? So thank you for taking that stroll down memory lane with me. 

I kind of wanna pivot to your profile picture. When I reached out to you to schedule this interview, I had sent a tweet that someone says, I don't care what app we go to, I am following you wherever we go. And they had screenshotted your profile picture, and that was a tweet that got a ton of engagement, likes, comments, quotes, whatever. Have you thought about changing your profile picture? Did you ever, do you ever think about changing it? 

Phil: So it's just, it's funny because I've had like several profile pictures before that.

Rhian: Mm-hmm. 

Phil: That one just for some reason is now stuck with people. 

Rhian: Yeah. 

Phil: I mean I could change it, but I feel like it's just kind alll over the place like that picture? 

Rhian: Mm-hmm. 

Phil: I'm like, man, I wish I would've smiled. People just kinda took that picture and now they're running with it. So, I mean probably will change it at some point. It's just such a menacing picture for some reason, but it's just, I don't even know what I was doing. I think I was just like, kinda walking around, just took it. Cause I thought the lighting was good. 

Rhian: Yeah. Like I said, nice, sunny day out. I was telling somebody, I think it rakes up there with again, a picture you didn't think was gonna be maybe important, but it's like MySpace Tom.

Everybody knows what MySpace Tom, you can't change that picture profile picture. Right? And I feel like in a world where Twitter verification still existed, like I don't think it would be a big deal, but if I logged onto Twitter and like I didn't see your picture, or I saw your name and then saw a different picture, I'd be like, oh, what's happening? Everything has changed. Mercury is in retrograde. I don't know what to do. 

Thank you for indulging that hard hitting journalism. If HuffPost is hiring, I'm clearly available. Let's talk about the work. The work you do, how are you navigating the changes? All of the social media profiles you've mentioned as an individual, but like as an editor at a publication, how are y'all thinking about that or how much are you even involved with that?

Phil: We tend to write a lot of stories about trending topics, right? So that is, Twitter is going under obviously will impact that. Because a lot of people do read those stories. A lot of people do read the stories of things that are happening online necessarily. They don't have a Twitter account or they don't wanna spend all day on social media, which I recommend if you don't have to be. If you don't do the work that I do, I'm like, why do you even wanna be on social media?

We are having conversation as to, you know, should we even still share trending news? Like how would that look if Twitter - so for example, when the other day when we had the whole rate limit, thing going on and something had changed to where you couldn't see Twitter's like tweets unless you were logged on an account, which obviously is just a awful decision for anybody that's looking to consider using the app.

So these are effects that obviously, they impact the average sort of like Twitter user, but they also impact a whole system of writers and reporters who rely on social media now because it’s so ingrained in what we do now. Which is why I don’t want to see it fail because people still use it. It's in our, kinda like our day to day for a lot of people.

Rhian: that decision, the tweet explaining the rationale behind rate limit exceeded. I was like, don't you have to make money? Don't you want me to be on Twitter all day? What are you doing? 

What are you doing in terms of your relationships with other journalists, other networks as you're sourcing for your personal feed, as you're editing content for articles for Huff Post?

How are you managing those relationships, has it become - I don't wanna like anchor everything to Twitter, but I know I've met so many people on Twitter, connected to so many experts on Twitter. That's where I went to find a lot of guests for this show. How do you manage those relationships as people are sending new information, news to boost, to share with your audience?

Phil: Yeah, well, well we are finding each other on a lot of other platforms as well, so I'm finding people on Spoutible, Bluesky. A lot of us are following the same sort of people. There's another good article about this. Basically they were, you know, they were saying either Twitter should just completely fail, or you know, a lot of the Twitter clones should just take over. It can't be both. I think just cause everybody, you know, we're, we're kinda jumping around and playing around right now, but I think everyone is mostly still kinda on, a little bit on Twitter, a little bit on Bluesky or whatever. It's gonna be hard. I have to see what this looks like, like with this whole multiverse of social media accounts. Looks, looks like in a couple more months. Like are we all going to be splintered? That’s not super effective for anyone.

You know, we're, we're following each other around. I'm experimenting with different platforms and sharing sorts of stories that I think might work on another platform like Spill that might not work on Threads. Right? All of these platforms, all of these sort of Twitter clones have different things that work for them that don’t necessarily work for the others.

So it's just interesting to kinda experiment though. I like it because I get to see what works, what works, what works here, what doesn't work. But yeah, we're finding each other. 

Rhian: Do you have a front runner in the Twitter clone race? Like as a user. Do you have a favorite in the Twitter Clone race?

Phil: Hmm. Um, let's see. So I, I like Spill just as a separate sort of entity because it's, it's, it's actually quite different from the rest of the other platforms. So I like using it because it's kind, it's kind of fun. It has a very niche audience, which is also cool. I like Threads a lot because it's very smooth, it's very easy, you know, it's easy, easy to use. 

The only big issue with that is that I'm forced to read all of this crap from like brands and like these other like, weird accounts that I just don't follow.

Rhian: Yeah. 

Phil: You know, that is not, I don't want that at all, basically. If I wanted to see what some random fitness influencer has to say about whatever is going on in the news, I would just follow that person. Bt tI don't, I don't really care what KFC has to say about, you know, whatever. So that’s the only big thing about Threads. I just don't care about what the brands have to say.

Bluesky is very insular. I don't mind it. I would say it's the closest thing to Twitter, but it's still in beta, I think it's still in, like you still need codes. I don't really know what the plan for Bluesky is. And then Spoutible is another one. I've been using that for a while. 

They’re all fine, but they can't really, they don't really replicate what Twitter was at it's apex. 

Rhian: Mm-hmm. 

Phil: You know, and obviously they're, they're all pretty new, so it's hard to tell. But Twitter is, so, again, it's just so ingrained into what we think about in regards to social media that it's just, I can't really tell, I need a longitudinal study to see how people are gonna feel about it. It's just too early to really tell. 

Rhian: Again, I was preparing for our conversation today, Twitter was broken. You couldn't look at like a specific user's feed. So I'm on my computer looking and I was like, oh, well maybe I can look on my phone and see if Twitter is broken. But it's like, which of these apps would I go to to find out if Twitter was broken?

Because it used to be Instagram was broken, Facebook was broken, there was an earthquake in LA, you go to Twitter. Was that an earthquake? Is Instagram broken? If the hammer's broken, what do I do? I don't know. So we'll see. I think that is you, you got to it earlier, like everybody's kind of fractured right now as we try to decide what horse we're gonna get behind. So we shall see. 

Part of Twitter is that it's up to the minute. If you're not in front of a TV that's playing CNN or the local news station or whatever. How have you managed some of the quickly developing, usually pretty devastating moments over the last few years? I'm thinking specifically of Kobe's death of, unfortunately mass shootings, of January 6th, where there's so much information out there.

How were you using different platforms, using your training as a journalist? To sus out, to sort through the information and decide what to put out there. 

Phil: So, great question, because there's so much out there. So luckily I'm in a position where I have tools to be able to kind of find what is, at least coming from a reputable source or not.

There's a lot of different ways to find out if it’s true. You know there are outlets that I tend to go to that. I'm like, I can, I can probably trust this, probably trust this source, even though I might not necessarily care for how they're reporting about it. Right? So, TMZ is a good example. There are places that are, you know are pretty strong, pretty reputable. 

But in today's world, we have news being broken by, you know, a person on the street or random newsletter number one, like there, there's a lot of different, even blogs and posts. So it's like you kind of have to, I tend to just wait, like in general. I know people see my posts a lot, but if there's, if there's something that I'm just like, okay, I just do not feel like this is, is really credible.

So like the Tyler Perry buying BET news I was. When I saw that  I sourced it all the way back to this, where it came from, like the original, original source. Like where'd this come from? Because now a bunch of blogs are taking it into what I call this aggregation snowball. People are just taking, and taking and taking.

Rhian: Yeah.

Phil: You know, and they're like, where is this even coming from? So it came from some kinda random blog and I couldn't find any other source on it which is just red flag. And then when I reached out to him, they were like, oh, well, you know, I thought I had something and I took it down.

So, but by then it's just, it just doesn't matter because it's already, because now half of the internet thinks that Tyler Perry owns BET.

Rhian: Shaderoom has already posted about it four times. 

Phil: So Yeah. So once it's there, it's just, it's over, you know? So it's like, it really is a snowball, once one person shares it. So that's why I try to be very cautious. Because I know people see something I’m posting that it’s probably true. So I don't mind waiting. I think there's a sort of insane rush to be first, because that is sort of how you build credibility, right? Like that's, honestly, that's basically the best way to sort of build credibility by being the first one to publish whatever it is, whatever news you have.

But the very first thing I learned was, you know, it's way better to be right than first, you know? But unfortunately that's something, that's a journalism cornerstone that people are not necessarily learning or don't even care about. Right? Or don't they don't really care. Because this is, it's just social media, whatever.

But these things have real world ramifications the more serious it is, I try to just be patient. I don't necessarily need to be first anymore. It's great if you can. I don't need to be first, it's important to be right. It’s much more important to be right.

Rhian: Yeah, for sure. I'm thinking, I don't even know if you remember this, but there was a hip hop Instagram that reported on Queen Elizabeth's death.

Phil: Mm-hmm. 

Rhian: And people were posting it, RIP and I was like, y'all, who is this? Are we not going to well consider things? 

Phil: That was funny because, first of all, I was just like, I was really curious as to this sort of random blog saying that they have sources inside Buckingham Palace. 

Rhian: Yeah. Who do you know?

Phil: I'm like, yeah, who do you know? So they're, I don't know, I just want people to like, take a minute and just think critically about certain things. Right? So like if somebody, if, if some random blog based in the United States says they have sources inside Hollywood or like the BBC hasn't posted about it, like all these, like The Sun hasn't even posted about it. It might just be just time to just relax, like just a little bit. It's just much more important to me. Right? And I guess ultimately they were right because she died like a month later, or whatever. But that’s not how we do things.

Journalists are held to a standard, right? Like if I had posted something like that, I could lose my job, right? Mm-hmm. but bloggers, they are, they're only accountable to themselves. Right. So it's like 

Rhian: mm-hmm. 

Phil: You don't really have a standard, a practice of standards, you know, for your, your newsroom or whatever it's called, then you can kinda of just do whatever you want.

Rhian: Basically, they, yeah. There are no consequences because I don't remember the name of that blog. I just remember that they posted that. And I still don't, I never followed them. But do I still see them in my feed? Probably. I don't know what they're talking about. 

Phil: I mean, it doesn't really, it doesn't matter. People remember, but like, not really, you know, so it's just kinda like there's no real harm done to your credibility except for people, a number of people who tend to remember that sort of thing. 

Rhian: Just us, just us talking about it. Yeah. It's not individuals, so there's no harm, no foul to their ability to sell roses and night lights and whatever, supplements in the comments section. So they're doing fine. 

Phil, that's really all I have for you. I think we covered your career, your relationship with Twitter, how we're trying to figure out Twitter.

What are you excited about? If you were gonna do a hard pivot of your personal fee to only talk about a very specific thing that matters to you, what would it be? 

Phil: Um hmm. I think if I were to do a hard pivot, it would just be about NBA basketball. It would be about sports. That's it. 

Rhian: Okay.Love it.

Phil:I would just be a part of, part of NBA Twitter, and that's just what I would do. It's taboo to say this, but I'm kind of casually watching. I've only been casually watching lately. 

But I do really enjoy keeping up with the NBA whenever I can. 

Rhian: So are you, you're a Pistons fan then? 

Phil: Yes, unfortunately. 

Rhian: Hey, I'm, I'm a Rockets fan. We're, we're chilling at the bottom, this is, we, 

Phil: we drafted the twins.

Rhian: Yeah. We're chilling at the bottom of the rankings. Yep. Hopefully it'll be playoff, you know, contenders…, no. 

Phil: Somewhere down the line. 

Rhian: Yeah. Yeah. There's no need to look into a crystal ball, but at least you've won a championship this millennium. I do not remember success. I remember missing 27 3 pointers in a row.

That is, yes, that is a legacy. I am contending with, 

Phil: I'm sorry, 

Rhian: I'm fine. I'm doing the best I can. I'm not emotional. It's dusty in here. 

Phil,  I have a challenge for you. I don't know if this will work. Can you list all the places people can find you on the internet? 

Phil: Ooh, okay. Yes, yes, yes. So I am obviously on Twitter.

Phil underscore Lewis underscore. I'm on Bluesky, Phil dot Lewis or whatever but I’ll pop up. I’m on Spoutible. Just Phil Lewis, I think. I'm on Instagram, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on Threads. I'm on Spill. Oh my goodness. I'm on TikTok. [Editor’s note: Here is Phil’s Linktree if you want to keep up]

Rhian: So some combination of Phil and Lewis with the dot or underscore? Yes, do the best you can.

Phil Lewis. And my picture is pretty much the same on all of them. And I'm on Facebook. 

Rhian: And the picture, that's the guiding light. That's the one. 

Phil, thank you so much for joining me on That Can't Be Right. Everybody, if you're on those apps, make sure you're following Phil for information that might not necessarily be the first person to report, but we're pretty sure it's accurate. No cousins in Buckingham Palace, no cousins in the Pentagon, no cousins sliding us information about martial law, however you spell it. Those are the, those are the days of the pandemic. 

In the meantime, everybody, if you enjoy this episode, please rate, review, subscribe to That Can’t Be Right wherever you're listening, and that's it.