Disclaimer:
Please read this article until the end. After having written this article, I had a conversation with john3 and my initial disagreement was significantly reduced.
This can serve as an example of how two people gain an understanding for each other's position by talking to each other. I have the utmost respect for john3 after our interaction.
Please keep this in mind while reading the following article. I have not altered the article to give you an impression of my initial reaction -- which you can contrast to my point of view after discussing our disagreement.
Alright,
I swore, I would not write about politics.
And I stayed almost 100% true to that promise. But right now, I have read an article by the Publish0x author john3 which leads me dangerously close to breaking my promise...
However,
for me, this is not about politics.
This is about framing news articles -- and it is about sticking to the truth.
This is the article I am responding to. In particular, my response is about the first paragraph. So that is a pretty short read, but it gives me enough material to write an entire article about.
The title of the article is:
America is on a war path.
And the author's blog is called "truth_in_a_foreign_language". Judging by that name, I assume that truth is important to him. I like that. Truth is also important to me. So, we do have something in common -- maybe.
So, let's find out how close to the truth he stays in his article.
He wrote in his first sentence:
A few days ago, a car drove through a Black Lives Matter protest in Times Square.
Which incident is he referring to? Unfortunately, he did not post a link to any news story. So, I searched the internet and found this (and only this) story from September, 4th. The article was published today on Publish0x. So, basically 25 days later. To me that's more than "a few days ago". Therefore, I'm not sure whether this is the right story. But at the end of his article he wrote "First published on Medium." Let's check when that was -- September, 6th. Ok, that makes sense. The article on Medium starts with the exact same words -- and when he copied it over to Publish0x 19 days later, he did not read the first sentence and did not adjust it accordingly. No big deal. With some research, I was able to figure that out. Of course, it would have been nicer if he gave us the reference -- and if he updated his first sentence, but the important thing is:
We can safely assume that we found the news story that the article is referring to.
Edit:
While I was writing the article, john3 confirmed that his article is indeed about this particular incident.
So let's watch the video that this is all about. For your convenience, I have pasted it here. It is less than 40 seconds long. So you might as well click on it...
The video was uploaded on September, 3rd. Therefore, we can safely assume that john3 watched it before writing his article. How do I know that? Because who would write a lengthy article without doing the least bit of research and not even watch 38 seconds of video material? Nobody, I hope...
This is his conclusion after watching the video:
It was clearly an intentional act meant to physically harm protesters. That’s attempted murder.
How did he end up with this conclusion? I am baffled.
Did he see that the car stopped initially and then it drove on through the crowd -- at relatively low speed? While the crowd was smashing bikes against the car? Is that how you would clearly attempt murder? -- By stopping first and then continuing at relatively low speed?
Read it again. That is what he claimed.
It was clearly an intentional act meant to physically harm protesters. That’s attempted murder.
He goes on to write
But it wasn’t about details or facts, it was about politics.
That's exactly the impression I get of your article, john3...
john3, if you happen to read this article of mine, please do respond. I am interested in understanding how you ended up with those conclusions. I am not trying to attack your character. I am not trying to say you did a lousy job with your article. I just don't understand how you ended up where you ended up. Maybe you would be so gracious to explain that. And remember the name of your blog is "truth_in_a_foreign_language". Let's both stick to the truth. Ok?
PS: john3, judging by the name of your blog, I assume you're not a native English speaker. And I would like to point out that neither am I. So, please, do not feel insulted by any formulation or particular word I used. Insulting or ridiculing you is not my intention and I apologize if you feel that way by my written words.
PPS: This is a message to everybody who reports on news articles. Please don't add fuel to the fire by framing your stories based on some narrative that you want to push. Please stick to the truth.
PPPS: john3 clarified a lot after receiving my criticism and our disagreement was reduced significantly. If you want to read his response in full, please visit the comments to his article.
To summarize, he sent me an additional source and laid out his point of view and his intentions for writing the article.
Here is my response to him:
Thank you very much for your detailed answer. I can definitely say that my disagreement became a lot smaller. I believe that you are right in everything that you state -- except for the statement that it was attempted murder. We have seen, unfortunately, what it looks like when people really try to kill other people using vehicles. They don't hit the brakes before hitting the crowd.
But I have to admit, it looks like the driver had the intention to at least scare the crowd -- or to cause them bodily harm. I doubt that this qualifies as attempted murder, but I could be wrong. I'm not a legal expert.
And I am very surprised that some people in the crowd suffered broken bones. From my judgement of the speed of the car, it did look like the car might have slightly pushed some people out of the way, but if people really suffered broken bones from the contact with the car (and not by picking up a bike and smashing it against the car), my assessment must have been incorrect.
I definitely appreciate how you handled my criticism. I'm actually very impressed by it and I have the highest respect for you for how you handled it. Thank you that you responded the way you did. I wish more people would react that way. The world would be a much better place than it is right now.
Dear reader, thank you for taking an interest in this article. And thank you for reading through it to the end. I appreciate that.
If you disagree with my analysis, please feel free to let me know in the comments. I have outlined my views on disagreements and constructive criticism in this article.
Sources:
Cover photo by marco allasio from Pexels.
PPS photo by Jeremy Bishop from Pexels.
it's hard for me to comment on this constructively my friend. the video clip is very short, and doesn't provide much context. it does appear the car comes to an abrupt stop when i watched it. i can't tell definitevely, but it appears it was not travelling at low speed prior to stopping.
it also appears to accelerate to reach high speed after stopping. i can't tell if it was done maliciously, in self defence, or fear, or anything.
i'm just going to stick to providing my initial obersvations from the video for my comments.