• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Jussie Smollet Trial

A thought that I have only annecdotal evidence to support. Why does seem like the really high profile hate crimes that get a lot of news coverage seem to turn out to be hoaxes so often?

I have an hypothesis, real hate crimes are just not that sensational. Some kid getting beaten, some slur yelled out of a moving car, slurs yelled as a shop lifter runs out the door, crap like that.
 
ahhell said:
A thought that I have only annecdotal evidence to support. Why does seem like the really high profile hate crimes that get a lot of news coverage seem to turn out to be hoaxes so often?

I have an hypothesis, real hate crimes are just not that sensational. Some kid getting beaten, some slur yelled out of a moving car, slurs yelled as a shop lifter runs out the door, crap like that.
Click to expand...

I wonder if there's also something about victims in general not wanting to speak up about their being a victim.

I suppose one could argue that the hoaxers are doing a public service, by normalizing the act of speaking up about being a victim. It might even be low-key noble to do that.
 
theprestige said:
I wonder if there's also something about victims in general not wanting to speak up about their being a victim.

I suppose one could argue that the hoaxers are doing a public service, by normalizing the act of speaking up about being a victim. It might even be low-key noble to do that.
Click to expand...

I think I stick with the more obvious, there mostly just narcists looking for attention with a little of the noble lie as cover. And almost certainly doing more harm than good by allowing folks so inclined to believe that hate crimes are as likely hoax as not. And Frankly, it almost seems as though the stories that make the news are as likely to be be hoaxes as not. Even before they're revealed as hoaxes, they seem(based solely on anecdote) to be more likely to make the news.
 
This all ties in to one of my other hobby horses: The media is not your friend. If the stories that make the news are as likely to be hoaxes as not, what does that say about the "journalists" who report on them?
 
theprestige said:
This all ties in to one of my other hobby horses: The media is not your friend. If the stories that make the news are as likely to be hoaxes as not, what does that say about the "journalists" who report on them?
Click to expand...

This seems a pretty distorted view of reality on your part.
 
It was totally conditional, I fully admit its anecdotal, I also don't believe that the majority of hate crimes are hoaxes, but I would be surprised if the hate crimes that get wide spread coverage are not disproportionately hoaxes.

I also wonder if you have any evidence that it would a distorted perception. I can find evidence that news coverage of crime and police violence does cover both out of proportion to occurrence to reality, it would be surprising if they got hate crimes right.

Its actually quite obvious to most people. What percentage of child kidnappings are by strangers? What percentage of kidnappings of children that get national coverage are about stranger kidnappings?

In the 2000s, while crime rates were plummeting, news coverage of crime was increasing.

And police violence, Most Americans think there were orders of magnitudes more unarmed black men killed by police than are in reality. Granted, not direct evidence of media distortion but there must be a reason for that distorted perception.
 
Last edited:
ahhell said:
It was totally conditional, I fully admit its anecdotal, I also don't believe that the majority of hate crimes are hoaxes, but I would be surprised if the hate crimes that get wide spread coverage are not disproportionately hoaxes.
Click to expand...

How could it be any other way? The entire point of a hoax is to get attention.

And police violence, Most Americans think there were orders of magnitudes more unarmed black men killed by police than are in reality. Granted, not direct evidence of media distortion but there must be a reason for that distorted perception.
Click to expand...

You should always assume everything presented by the media is distorted, unless proven otherwise.

And that's not necessarily out of malice on their part (though I think there is some of that). One factor which contributes to this is that normal isn't newsworthy, exceptions to normal are. Dog bites man is not a story, man bites dog is. Another is that for the most part journalists are not subject matter experts. They usually don't have deep knowledge of the topics they have to cover. I like to make fun of journalists for being idiots (the best and the brightest don't go into this field), but this applies even to the ones who aren't. Manpower limitations mean journalists necessarily cover a wider range of issues than anyone is even capable of having expertise in. And lastly, journalists are necessarily taking a small sample of events to cover, and it's not going to be a random statistical sample. It's going to be cherry picked, by people looking for novelty who don't understand the issues deeply, and presenting those stories to an audience who also doesn't understand the issues deeply.

Given these facts, we should not expect accurate representation of an entire topic (like crime) even when coverage of individual events (a specific crime) is perfectly accurate and without bias. And they often can't even do that much.
 
Kim Foxx, Cook County Prosecutor, not looking good after special prosecutor's report.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/kim-foxx-lied-contacts-jussie-smollett-sister-investigation
Foxx told the media that she stopped communicating with Smollett's sister. However, the report says she sent five text messages to her and talked with her on the phone another three times through Feb. 13, 2019, five days after she claimed she cut off communication

Webb said he is going to refer Kim Foxx and her attorneys to the Illinois Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission (ARDC) for ethics violations

Webb continued by saying it included a breach of its "obligations of honesty and transparency by making false and/or misleading statements to the public regarding the nature and reasons for the dismissal" of the initial case and said it was a "major failure of the operations.
Click to expand...


Full Report:
https://dig.abclocal.go.com/wls/documents/2021/122021-wls-smollett-report.pdf
 
ahhell said:
And police violence, Most Americans think there were orders of magnitudes more unarmed black men killed by police than are in reality. Granted, not direct evidence of media distortion but there must be a reason for that distorted perception.
Click to expand...

Ziggurat said:
How could it be any other way? The entire point of a hoax is to get attention.



You should always assume everything presented by the media is distorted, unless proven otherwise.

And that's not necessarily out of malice on their part (though I think there is some of that). One factor which contributes to this is that normal isn't newsworthy, exceptions to normal are.
Click to expand...

But I do think that pushing a specific narrative is also a pretty big factor. The example ahhell gave is a perfect example. With issues of race and police violence so completely dominating the media for two years, how can it be that the public is so wildly misinformed on the issue?

Normal is definitely not newsworthy, but notice that the George Floyd killing was newsworthy but not the killing of Tony Timpa. And then notice that news networks were caught cropping guns out of videos, editing 911 calls, and more and that the errors always were of a nature that would steer the viewership towards certain conclusions. It's pretty hard to draw any conclusion other than that a specific narrative is being pushed.
 
sir drinks-a-lot said:
But I do think that pushing a specific narrative is also a pretty big factor. The example ahhell gave is a perfect example. With issues of race and police violence so completely dominating the media for two years, how can it be that the public is so wildly misinformed on the issue?

Normal is definitely not newsworthy, but notice that the George Floyd killing was newsworthy but not the killing of Tony Timpa. And then notice that news networks were caught cropping guns out of videos, editing 911 calls, and more and that the errors always were of a nature that would steer the viewership towards certain conclusions. It's pretty hard to draw any conclusion other than that a specific narrative is being pushed.
Click to expand...

Agree. The media is getting very arrogant in their ability to sway the public's opinion.

We weren't supposed to even think that Smollett was faking this.

We were supposed to think Rittenhouse targeted black people.

It makes you wonder if they've been successful building a narrative on other things, that we don't even realize. The Impending climate disaster?, Trump?, Covid?
 
sir drinks-a-lot said:
But I do think that pushing a specific narrative is also a pretty big factor.
Click to expand...

I agree it is in this case. My point is more general, that the press shouldn't be trusted even in the absence of specific narratives they may be trying to push, and it shouldn't even be trusted by people who think the narrative they are pushing is true.
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
In what way did the media stop you from finding out Smollett was faking this? And what non-media source enabled you to figure out that he was?
Click to expand...

I'm not worried about me. I'm worried about the people who see tweets like this, that are still up, and don't realize he was lying.
https://twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status/1090608076015759360?s=20

https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1090422326783606784?s=20

https://twitter.com/KamalaHarris/status/1090361495119187969?s=20

I'm worried about all of the articles about the "attack", that added to the narrative of racist whites attacking blacks. That may be corrected or edited now, but it's too late, many people see the article at it's outset and never see the retraction or correction.

Example: Look at this correction from GQ, they changed 'Far-right' to 'America' after Smollett was arrested. https://www.gq.com/story/jussie-smollett-hate-crime Of course they left in:
The Racist, Homophobic Attack on Jussie Smollett
Click to expand...

The New Corrected Headline reads:
The Racist, Homophobic Attack on Jussie Smollett Is America's Endgame
 
Last edited:
Ziggurat said:
I agree it is in this case. My point is more general, that the press shouldn't be trusted even in the absence of specific narratives they may be trying to push, and it shouldn't even be trusted by people who think the narrative they are pushing is true.
Click to expand...
This is especially true of reporting in the first week or so after any sensational event.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom