Advanced Journalism or: How the Washington Post is manipulating you this week. · 12:18pm Jun 14th, 2018
It ends with this paragraph, after all:
"So men, if you really are#WithUsand would like us to not hate you for all the millennia of woe you have produced and benefited from, start with this: Lean out so we can actually just stand up without being beaten down. Pledge to vote for feminist women only. Don’t run for office. Don’t be in charge of anything. Step away from the power. We got this. And please know that your crocodile tears won’t be wiped away by us anymore. We have every right to hate you. You have done us wrong.#BecausePatriarchy. It is long past time to play hard for Team Feminism. And win."
Considering both people who linked this to me are otherwise critical, cynical people, I am compelled to share this warning:
If a journalistic organization posts an inflammatory piece that is outside their usual rhetoric or alignment, the chances are very high it was not posted in good faith. It's "weak-manning", that is to say, posting the thought of a few people who genuinely do believe the opinion, but are non-central and are definitely misaligned with the majority, to weaken a position by association.
I liken it to the Huffington Post posting a minimum wage 'Opinion' article as written by an Ayn Rand fan. Or any liberal guest that Fox News brings on to argue a view point. At best, they're doing it for the outrage clicks.
You are having another side misrepresented to make you biased against that side, because it has been given a 'fair' chance of representation and it was obviously bullshit.
What, unless you thought the WaPo, including its male editorial staff, sincerely stood behind an article they titled "Why can't we hate men"?
They're known for malicious incompetence when it is advantageous to be so.
Wow, the fact that someone actually wrote it and published it as something other than parody is all kinds of sad, cringy and alarming. I do hope readers don't just take it at face-value and will actually think for themselves.
This is a new article? I feel like this is not a new article. But I also feel like this only further supports my belief that the mainstream media is trash.
Remember everyone, if you ever see an article with an inflammatory title like this one, the best thing that you can do is not read it. Don’t tell your friends about it. Don’t even look at it. Ideally, you wouldn’t be reading WaPo at all, but hey, you have to get your news from somewhere. The entire purpose of an inflammatory title like that is to get you to read it. Its purpose is to attract clicks. Its purpose is to make money. It contains no useful or meaningful information: Junk news never does. The only reason this stuff is around is because someone keeps reading it.
Don’t be that someone; read a different article.
uhhh and folks wonder why i stopped reading the newspapers or even the news at all.
Betteridge's law of headlines may be relevant here.
Seriously. That sounded like something the Onion would have posted. Wow.
4882605
Mainstream Media isnt just trash, its intentionally manipulative.
They are incapable of telling you the truth about a simple thing like a person just feeding some fish and instead try to twist it even though there is countless evidence (made by them themselves) of the opposite. What honest opinion do you expect to get from them about more complex things.
Anyone not framing this issue as 'gender equality' is just adding more fuel to the fire.
Hello! I’m reading this as a normal, sane feminist who doesn’t inheritly hate someone because of the way they were born.
This is quite possibly the worst part of the entire thing I just read. “Don’t be in charge of anything?” That’s the exact opposite of what we’re trying to preach. We want, and this is crazy, I know, equality. Wow! We don’t want men to be oppressed like we were, we just want to have equal pay and live our lives.
Sincerely,
A decent human being.
That's why I take everything the corporate media says with a grain of salt. For all that the right talks about supposed liberal bias in the media, most of the media apparatus, especially in the U.S., is firmly in service of existing institutions of power. Their goal (at an institutional level, at least) is not to inform the public, but to make money and manage public perception. Maybe I'm too cynical, but I don't see the media jumping to the side of social justice unless there's some ulterior motive. Usually that's the pursuit of profits. But casting feminists as crazy extremists doesn't surprise me in the least. It feeds into an anti-feminist sentiment in much of the general population that's already been carefully cultivated.
4882656
Eh, as a man, I think that giving up our prerogatives in politics, in the professions, and elsewhere would be quite liberating. And certainly it's easy enough advice to follow; doing nothing, standing aside, is literally the easiest thing in the world.
As a FYI in the US, domestic use of propaganda was essentially unbanned in 2013-2014. Oddly enough you see a sharp turn in journalistic integrity around then too, almost as if being no longer held liable for many things encouraged it.
Just a thought.
It's definitely a deliberately inflammatory piece, but I don't know if it directly compares to "weak-manning" when done by a conservative at HuffPo or a progressive at Fox News. WaPo has taken a decidedly left-of-center point of view ever since Trump was elected, and I doubt they are trying to deliberately dilute their brand now.
I think this piece hasn't been posted for grander ideological reasons, but for the pedestrian reasons most pieces like this are posted: inflammatory material drives clicks and comments, even if not likes, and those are how an online journalism site makes its money. There is no more effective means of getting people to react in ways that are profitable to the content creator than to generate outrage, which is why you see so many articles and titles written today designed to make you feel mad.
4882685
You can do you but what this article is trying to say is that all men should stay out of politics, no matter how kind, knowledgeable and open minded they are. For some people it’s easy to step aside and watch the world go on, but some people want to change the world and all people should have the chance to. :D
4882778
Oh, nobody can actually change the world. It changes on its own quite unhelped and unhindered by any of us. There was a time this wasn't so - that time is dead and buried along with class struggle, decolonization and women's lib.
I hate how much of a mixed bag wapo is. They run stuff like this and occasionally almost make up stories (pewdiepie comes to mind) but they do get scoops. Whatever, Bezos isn't getting any more of my money.
Once again, another reminder that a good portion of American news media is trash built less on factual presentation and more on sensationalism.
To be fair, I don't think it's possible to be an Ayn Rand fan and not appear to be a parody.