The actual answer is that Tibbetts was murdered by an undocumented immigrant, and her story has been pushed with breathless fervor by the right wing in America-up to and including President Trump himself-with the aim of promoting an anti-immigrant agenda and, in this special case, detracting attention from the very bad news surrounding the administration…. So why is the murder of Mollie Tibbetts, a 20-year-old University of Iowa college student whose body was found Tuesday morning approximately one month after she went missing, being covered by the New York Times, Washington Post, and any number of mainstream national media outlets? Body Believed to Be That of Mollie Tibet’s, Iowa College Student, Is Found After Undocumented Immigrant’s Arrest.Īs Paste’s Shane Ryan pointed out, there’s literally no reason this story would have been national news if it weren’t for the right-wing sensationalism. The Times got dragged so hard for this that they almost immediately changed it: Wisconsin Republicans Defiantly Move to Limit the Power of Incoming Democrats.Ģ. Not just whitewashing here, but outright lionizing the GOP’s heinous voter suppression and deeply partisan gerrymandering, and refusing to even acknowledge their questionably legal antidemocratic tactics, let alone change them. Wisconsin Republicans Defiantly ‘Stand Like Bedrock’ in the Face of Democratic Wins. Here, then, in no particular order, are the 17 most atrocious New York Times headlines from 2018-a most atrocious year.ġ. As cognitive scientist and propaganda expert George Lakoff recently pointed out (not in the New York Times) “Trump needs the media, and the media help him by repeating what he says.” In other words, we’re being lied to, but we don’t need to live that lie. But the problem today is deeper than revising individual pieces: Journalists must revise their entire code, and recalibrate the metrics for what constitutes “the truth.” This isn’t because they’re getting it wrong more frequently, it’s because we’re being lied to more frequently. Often, Times editors admit when they get it wrong, and as this Twitter account documents so well, they’ll revise headlines and abstracts. They have a duty to reflect the truth as best they see it, not to stack the deck, and to respect the votes and platforms of people on both sides of this divide. What do primatologists do, though, when a chimp attacks them?Īt some point in the production of any piece, reporters and editorial staff must make subjective decisions. They have treated the objectively terrible Donald Trump-who says and does objectively terrible things toxic to the very democracy that makes the free press possible-with the clinical detachment of scientists observing a lab specimen. press-and the Times in particular-has allowed personal biases not just to slip in to their headlines and reporting, but to govern their philosophy. The job of reporters (not opinion writers or analysts) is to present objective, fact-based journalism and not favor one candidate or point of view over another. The Gray Lady-a Times sobriquet originally meant to invoke respect-has over the last few years revealed herself as a crotchety old biddy, clinging like a trailer-park Trumper to antiquated values that don’t reflect the world as it is, and really never did in the first place. Make no mistake: This too is bias, and though it’s not nearly as corrosive to democracy as the Trump administration, it distorts and accelerates that corrosion-all in the name of neutrality, no less. The state of our nation and the state of our president have all but passed the point of rescue, but the press, in misguided pursuit of objectivity and led by the New York Times, still “bothsides” its coverage.
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