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Paul Cantrell

This article about the actions of a Black man lets •five• other people — all of them his political opponents, and all of them white — describe his actions in their own terms before giving him a chance to describe them in his. The Black man gets a voice 10 paragraphs in.

That’s bullshit.

theguardian.com/us-news/2023/s

UPDATE: The Guardian drastically restructured the article after I posted this, apparently in response to reader pressure. Nice work, everyone!

The Guardian · Democrat Jamaal Bowman denies pulling fire alarm to delay House voteBy Maya Yang
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Paul Cantrell

Compare this article from The Hill, whose reporting I would not typically compare favorably to The Guardian:
thehill.com/homenews/house/423

The Hill manages to say right up front that Bowman says it was an accident involving a closed door.

The Guardian first lets us hear that it was a riot, a delay tactic, a felony, an attempt to shut down the government — all false — before we get his actual story. WTF.

The Hill · Rep. Bowman pulls fire alarm before government funding vote, causes office evacuationBy Nick Robertson
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Paul Cantrell

Here is the email I sent to the readers’ editor at The Guardian:

As a subscriber who is usually quite happy with The Guardian’s coverage, I was distressed at the perniciously structured article “Democrat Jamaal Bowman pulled fire alarm on Capitol Hill before House vote” (link). In this article in which a Black man is accused of a crime, we hear his actions described by five people who are not him — all of them his political opponents, and all of them white — before we hear even a single word of his own account of what happened. Compare this article from The Hill, whose reporting I would not typically compare favorably to The Guardian’s: link The Hill manages to say up front that Bowman says it was an accident involving a closed door. The Guardian, on the other hand, first lets us hear that it was a near-riot, a delay tactic, a felony, an attempt to shut down the government — all apparently false — before we get Bowman’s actual story.
This might seem like a minor quibble. It is not. As a newsperson, I’m sure you understand that framing is everything. Our initial impression of an event colors everything that follows. Because of this, nobody accused of a crime should have to wait 10 paragraphs — ten! — for their version of the story to enter the picture painted by a news article. That principle is universal, but in a country whose criminal justice system routinely targets and convicts Black people without just cause, I would think a responsible news organization would be doubly careful about this problem of initial framing when the accused is Black. I realize it is a vexing problem these days for news organizations to figure out how to cover bullshit without amplifying it. The Guardian failed in that task today. Simply reordering the paragraphs of a story would have prevented that failure.
Chris Halstead

@inthehands looks like they may have fixed it, based on the version I just read.

Oct 01, 2023, 01:29 PM·Public·Ivory for iOS
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