Thread by @AlexandraErin

Context Clues in the Era of #MeToo

Against all odds and much prevailing wisdom, the news audience trusts the news media. Here's why that's a problem.

alexandraerin.substack.com/p/context-clue…

I have been sleeping on the Defector since they launched, no more than vaguely aware of their existence as a landing pad for Deadspin exiles, but I love the work they are doing under the heading of "Journlismism". For instance, this piece from last month.
defector.com/police-say-a-l…

My piece for today, linked at the head of this thread, is about how audiences have a lot of implicit trust for the news, whatever "the news" means to them as individuals, and how this is a problem when the media abdicates this responsibility.

Which they do. Frequently.

If I had clicked onto Defector's Journalismism tag before I finished my newsletter piece, I probably would have wound up quoting this "Police Say" piece because it sums up the problem of "single-sourcing" stories from authority figures very nicely.

There are some special features of the media's relationship with police that do not apply to their relationship with other flavors of power, but the general principles apply, in terms of what it does, what it says/means, when a reporter goes with a single source.

Anyway... to return to the case of Josh Wolf Shenk flashing his staff in a zoom meeting. The public defense of him, aggravated by the LAT's reporting, amounted to "Surely this is disproportionate for a momentary mistake."

But the thing is, casually exposing one's employees or underlings to nudity is like a stock trope of an abusive boss in cringe comedy. Making the staffers attend them in a sauna, take dictation from a bathroom, whatever.

"The boss makes you work gathered around them while they're naked." is shorthand in visual storytelling for "This is a bad, abusive boss who is at best clueless about others' discomfort and very likely on a power trip."

And Shenk's side of events spins a story about how making everybody work while virtually gathered around him in the bathtub was not something he wanted to do nor lorded over everybody else... but as the Defector piece points out, we only heard his story.