Monday, July 30, 2018

Routine Journalistic Dishonesty At The Daily Beast

I've got no interest in defending Corey Stewart, but I'll do it anyway. The story suggests that Stewart said something like: majority black cities are shitholes. In fact, Stewart called Baltimore, Memphis, and New Orleans shitholes--and they are majority-black.
   Also: we're not told whether he's called any majority-white cities shitholes. And what counts in such a case? The color of the majority, or the color of the mayor? Or the city council? All of the above? Baltimore, largely, does seem like a shithole. (Not the Inner Harbor, though...) So...it's racist to say so? Is The Wire racist? It doesn't say that Baltimore is a shithole...not in so many words, anyway...
   Seems to me that the left-leaning press can't help lying about the right...even when there's absolutely no practical/political need to. Almost no matter how bad someone to their right is, they've got to spin them up into being worse.
   Counterpoint: this is just another instance of the the journalists-don't-write-their-own-headlines phenomenon.
   Countercounterpoint: I've had about enough of your PC apologism.
   Both sides do it. Maybe I just encounter it more on the left because there are more left-leaning publications, or because that's what I tend to read.
   Anyway: just let Corey Stewart speak for himself ya mo-rons. No need to embellish.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Counterpoint: this is just another instance of the the journalists-don't-write-their-own-headlines phenomenon."

I never bought this defense. It only works conditionally for the author of the piece, but some other journalist obviously wrote it. It's not like they have random headline generators doing that work (although sometimes it feels like they do). And considering that the headline is read many times more than the actual piece, it's actual the most important real estate for an honest take.

There's a reason why Frank Luther Mott mentions misleading headlines twice among his 5 characteristics of yellow journalism.

8:49 AM  
Blogger Winston Smith said...

Damn, that's a good point dude.

4:40 PM  

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