Tag: Washington Post

bookmark_borderWashington Post article epitomizes what is wrong with the media

Posted on by Marissa

Lately I have been avoiding consuming news as much as I can. Things have reached a point where I can no longer watch news shows or read news articles without becoming angry at the biased word choices of the so-called journalists. What is supposed to be the neutral providing of information has turned into editorializing and opinion. The below article from the Washington Post epitomizes what is wrong with the media. I read only the headline and the first sentence of the article, and there are almost too many false and biased things to count:

First of all, news outlets should not describe Trump’s claims as “falsehoods.” They should remain neutral on the truth or falsity of Trump’s statements and allow readers to form their own conclusions. Second, describing Trump’s claims as an “onslaught” is opinion, not factual. Third, Trump’s claims did not necessarily mislead any Americans, let alone millions, because as I already stated, it is up to readers to form their own conclusions about the truth or falsity of the claims. Fourth, undermining faith in the electoral system is not necessarily a bad thing, because if Trump’s claims are actually correct, and there are problems with the integrity of the electoral system, then it is good for people to question this system instead of having blind faith in it. To characterize undermining faith in the electoral system as inherently bad presumes the truth of what the authors are (wrongly, because their job is to be neutral) trying to prove: namely that Trump’s claims of election fraud are false. Fifth, what happened at the Capitol on January 6th was a protest, not a riot. And sixth, it was not really the protest that was deadly; it was the police response to it. Out of the five people who died for reasons related to that protest, one was a cop who was allegedly killed by a protestor, one was a cop who committed suicide, two were protesters who suffered medical emergencies, and one was a protestor who was deliberately killed by cops. 

So yeah, other than that, this article is totally appropriate and makes perfect sense… NOT! The individuals who wrote it and the editor(s) who allowed it to be published should be ashamed of themselves. And, as a side note, it’s awfully ironic that a news outlet so biased towards the left, and the accompanying tendency to spend as much money as possible on unnecessary government programs, is suddenly concerned about taxpayers’ money.

bookmark_borderAl-Baghdadi obituary: the Washington Post did nothing wrong

Posted on by Marissa

The Washington Post received a lot of criticism recently for its coverage of the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The newspaper’s headline read:

“Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, austere religious scholar at helm of Islamic State, dies at 48.”

Many people, including Ivanka Trump, believed that this headline was too positive for the leader of a violent organization and that the term “terrorist” would have been more appropriate than “austere religious scholar.”

The headline was quickly changed, and an editor at the Post explained that the original headline never should have been published.

There wouldn’t be anything wrong with using the word “terrorist,” but there was nothing wrong with the Post’s choice of headline, either, and there was no need to change it. The headline captures the fact that al-Baghdadi died, the fact that he had fundamentalist religious beliefs, and the fact that he was the leader of ISIS. “Austere religious scholar” is a neutral, and factually accurate, description. It is not a compliment, nor it is an insult. It is neither positive or negative. And using neutral language is exactly what all newspapers should do.

Columnist Robert Roe at the Maysville Ledger Independent took issue with the fact that the Post published the story about al-Baghdadi’s death in the obituaries section, writing that the paper’s editors “mislead their readers with the false narrative that this animal was something akin to a diplomatic religious leader.” I’m not sure what is wrong with publishing al-Baghdadi’s death notice in the obituaries section. There’s no rule that only admirable people are allowed to have obituaries written about them. Just as newspapers should describe things using neutral language and allow readers to form their own opinions, they should also publish obituaries for a variety of public figures and allow readers to make their own judgments about which of these public figures they find admirable and which they do not.

Jesse White, a columnist at the Mesabi Daily News, went so far as to suggest that the headline should have read, “Noted scumbag, rapist, torture expert, all-around piece of [expletive] and now former ISIS leader is dead: Good riddance.” He added that a sub-heading should have told readers that al-Baghdadi “blew himself up (along with three of his kids) instead of taking a bullet to the head from a member of our special forces on Saturday because he was a psychopathic coward.”

This type of language is a perfect example of what a newspaper should not do. A newspaper should never, under any circumstances, describe a person as a “scumbag,” a “coward,” or a “piece of [expletive]’ in an article. Other than on the editorial page, the job of a newspaper is to provide facts, not opinions. Language like this is not merely opinion, it is inflammatory and personally insulting. It would be completely unprofessional and inappropriate for a newspaper article to describe a person in such insulting terms, no matter who the person is, and it is preposterous to suggest that a newspaper should do so.

No concerns about neutrality or professionalism stopped the Boston Herald from characterizing al-Baghdadi’s death as “taking out the trash” on its front page:

A newspaper should never describe anyone’s death as “taking out the trash,” no matter what horrible things the person did and no matter how widely hated the person is. Hatred for a person, whether justified or not, is an opinion, and newspapers should not express opinions (other than on the editorial page). It’s the Herald’s headline, not the Washington Post’s, that should be the target of outrage and criticism.