Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Posted by Andrew Warner
The day Kabaka Oba was tragically shot, the Cincinnati Beacon published a story that gathered reactions from the scene of the crime. Certain comments made by Tyrone Smith, the leader of the S.T.O.P. Squad (a grassroots organization which aims to stop violence), deeply upset some of the Cincinnati Beacon’s most loyal trolls.
Commenters threatened the credibility of the Beacon, so much so that the Dean put an editorial stroke on to the column removing the clearly ludicrous and outlandish comments. The complaining trolls cited a variety of offenses.
1) Tyrone Smith’s opinion doesn’t matter whether he was at the crime scene or not, whether he was Oba’s friend or not. People called him crazy and unreliable, unworthy of space in a dignified publication like the Beacon.
2) “Journalists” (though the trolls pointed out frequently how the Beacon’s journalism isn’t real) should “edit out” crazy people in general.
3) Smith lacked, what the biz calls, “inherent credibility.” Apparently some people have it and some don’t.
4) Comments from someone who lack inherent credibility, especially when charged with hateful and possibly racist opinions, shouldn’t be shared with the community.
5) Tyrone Smith’s opinion was not the news, the shooting was the news.
I know 90% of the people that read this website are intentionally unintelligible and obnoxious (people who contribute actual thought to the website aren’t included), but I will apply your criticism, from the defenders of the Enquirer, the status quo, and “real” journalism everywhere, to an article in the Enquirer today.
The news of the article (criteria 5) was the “day without immigrants” protest. A demonstration where “500 families, students and low-wage workers from the area, mostly of Latino background,” (Enquirer) gathered together to protest possible immigration legislation.
By the Beacon trolls’ opinion, again using their own criteria, one crazy senior citizen who happened to be on the scene was not the news, no matter how controversial or relevant her opinion to the story at hand.
Meet Carolyn (pictured above) from Blue Ash, 81 years of age and oozing with “inherent credibility,” right? So much so that she received two paragraphs, two quotes, and a big picture on the Enquirer web page. Now, I understand they don’t have quite the readership we do, but she received a lot more coverage from them then Tyrone Smith did from the Cincinnati Beacon.
What was the message that made Carolyn worthy of all this coverage by a small time paper like the Enquirer? “Go Home.” She was the one woman counter protest to primarily darker skinned Latinos. Clearly her message, that immigrants of all kinds are not welcome in “her” country, was directed, in a very pointed way, towards people of different ethnicities. Do the Beacon trolls promote racist hate speech from one senior citizen who refuses to reveal even her last name? If not, are you fervently writing letters to the editor explaining how they are losing their credibility? Perhaps Callinan will strike this lone gunman’s comments as did the Dean.
For some reason it seems that the Beacon is held to a higher journalistic standard than the Cincinnati Enquirer. Perhaps It could be something else. Perhaps hate speech is only worthy of criticism when it is directed at an affluent politician. When negativity is being fired at nameless “illegals,” “aliens,” “guest workers,” or immigrants, it must be news.
Give it your own litmus test trolls: 1) Is Carolyn crazier and more unreliable than community activist Tyrone Smith? 2) Should the heralded pros at the Enquirer have edited out her one woman opinion—an opinion she wouldn’t associate with her “good name”? 3) Has Carolyn somehow earned inherent credibility that blesses her with the right to quotes and a picture in a major metropolitan paper? 4) Were her comments hateful, racist, and/or unfounded with any reason? 5) Was one woman, essentially without an identity (wouldn’t reveal it) the news, or was the news the thousands of protestors on the other side of the issue?
Since Carolyn doesn’t hold up the litmus test, perhaps the Beacon trolls only become active when an upstanding white man is the victim of someone’s negative opinion—must be Republicans, activating to help those who need it least. Why bother complaining to an editor about some blue collar immigrants?
I’m certain no one can argue that Carolyn passes the trolls’ litmus test in a logical way so I anticipate the usual idiocy that overruns the comment section. In advance I will tell you that the Enquirer was correct in publishing crazy Carolyn, because it is obvious from the piece that she was just that, a crazy old lady with nothing to say that contains a drop of substance. The same way that anyone with an IQ over 40 could tell Tyrone Smith was just a frustrated man spouting off at the mouth with conspiracy theories.
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