Thread by @squidlord

What I find interesting about this, as both someone who follows politics and who thinks of himself as a journalist despite that putting me lower than prostitutes and politicians, is the ridiculous passive voice in the headline.

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1545330619449999360

"Abe has died." 1/19

#AbeAssassination #journalism

Not "Abe was assassinated," which would be a far better headline in and of itself. It's not too long, it's punchy, there is an active verb. 2/19

It's as if Reuters wants to make this story disappear right in front of your eyes by making it as bland and invisible as possible.

A major national leader, one of the US's most supportive allies, has been murdered in broad daylight, and this is it. This is the story. 3/19

This is the announcement.

At least CNN gets SOMETHING right from a journalistic point of view. 4/19

(Though as an aside, if someone can tell me when CNN's homepage turned into a nightmare flashback to early 2000's web design and a duplicate of the O'Reilly Factor, that'd be nice.) 5/19

"Culturally unfathomable." I feel like if you don't understand the relatively long and convoluted history of assassination as a political tool in Japan, you probably aren't much of a security industry chief. Just saying. Read a book. 6/19

At least Fox News has some actual investigatory journalism on the front page under the headline and of the assassination takes up more than one quarter of one corner without any particular callout. 7/19

That's more of what I would expect for a proper journalistic outlet to provide. 8/19

In the spirit of complete fairness, this is the entire section for obvious assassination on CNN: 9/19

No discussion of possible motivations, no analysis, largely just bland reaction. Except for the most recent story that just popped at the top where the assassination suspect admits to having shot Abe.

Thanks guys. Bare minimum journalism, as expected. Good job. 10/19

Remember the days when real newsrooms used to have journalists who could do political analysis about the impacts of things in a reasonable, rational way with references so that you ended up feeling informed?

I do. I miss those days. 11/19

Just for fun, let's look at one of the up-and-comers, one of the new guys on the block, Newsmax. Not one of my usual stops for headlines but… 12/19

Damn. Now THAT is a headline and an excellent choice of photo to go with it. And also their homepage doesn't look like a refugee from 2003, which I consider a considerable bonus.

No wonder these guys are starting to eat the lunch of CNN and Fox.

I don't know. 13/19

Am I asking too much, here? This is a breaking, major news story. It has strategic importance to the world in particular right now because of the shipping crisis. This is big, big news. 14/19

Here I am on my usual Friday morning, prepping for the ridiculous little podcast that we do live for the #LBRYFoundation, scratching my little journalistic itch as casually as I can, and these guys are blowing their story. 15/19

(Hit up discord.gg/6FjW5EkkHA?eve… at 2p Eastern if you want to catch the #LBRY Foundation Community Podcast if you haven't suffered enough. odysee.com/@LBRYFoundatio… for just the stream and chat.) #GriftEngaged 16/19

I'm poking around, doing my usual news searches, and this is the stuff that I see from ostensible professionals. Which, theoretically, I am a member of the class of, since I've been paid to be a journalist. 17/19

I've previously suggested that what we need is a better of scumbag for our elite class and I maintain that here – except for the fact that journalists aren't members of our elite class no matter how much they stomp their feet and try to convince us they are. 18/19

I think we just need a better class of scumbag. 19/19