Mr. Thompson, 30, said he attended the Saturday rally but did not cover it. Shortly after 7 p.m. that day, he sent a text that included a screenshot of the headline to Bob Heisse, the executive editor of The Kenosha News.
“I don’t even know if I can associate with the company after that,” Mr. Thompson said in the text exchange. “I need to calm down, but I wanted you to know immediately.”
According to a screenshot provided by Mr. Thompson, Mr. Heisse responded, “Yes you should calm down. That is a public threat, and it is an exact quote at a rally that was to that point totally on message.”
Mr. Thompson replied: “Then I quit.”...
By noon Sunday, the headline had been changed on the Kenosha News site. It now reads: “Kenosha speaker strays from message at rally.”
“I hear the headline’s been changed,” Mr. Thompson wrote on Facebook. “Wow. Only took me quitting.”
September 1, 2020
"The story is about the entire reaction of all the speakers and people in attendance, and that quote [in the headline] is one outlier falling within a flood of positive ones."
Said Daniel Thompson, an editor at The Kenosha News, quoted in "Journalist Quits Kenosha Paper in Protest of Its Jacob Blake Rally Coverage" (NYT). The headline he objected to was: "Kenosha speaker: 'If you kill one of us, it’s time for us to kill one of yours.'"
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Lame all around. You law and order types need to start standing up for what you believe. The left radicals have co-opted and partnered with the mainstream left and you need to decide where you stand...
Polite is over....
The original headline strayed from the MSM message.
“I hear the headline’s been changed,” Mr. Thompson wrote on Facebook. “Wow. Only took me quitting.”
Then let us hope there are many more such headlines in similar rags across the nation.
"Kenosha speaker: 'If you kill one of us, it’s time for us to kill one of yours.'"
Interesting...
It now reads: “Kenosha speaker strays from message at rally.”
“I hear the headline’s been changed,” Mr. Thompson wrote on Facebook. “Wow. Only took me quitting.”
Congratulations, you managed to get the headline to match the narrative. You attended as a "citizen" not a journalist (not that it much matters any more) and did not like the take from the actual journalist that attended in that capacity.
Daniel Thompson, an editor at The Kenosha News, resigned over a headline that highlighted a speaker who made a threat during a peaceful protest.
Not only did he resign but he had to do it in such a way to maximize making the story about him. Any "props" he would have gotten for standing up for his principles [no matter your position on the validity of those principles] he squandered by trying to become a public martyr over it.
So was it "peaceful" or "mostly peaceful"? Was that [in Whoopie speak] peaceful or peaceful peaceful?
It was a rally in support of Jacob Blake. A "not mostly peaceful" individual. The left apparently never met a thug they didn't like but sure, you do you.
I read the article. Mr. Thompson comes off a bit poorly to me and I feel like there's alot more animus under the surface.
Specifically, he provided and affirmed the quote from the speaker. A speaker, with the power of the lecturn, at a Jacob Blake rally in Kenosha publicly stated that it was time to kill police in an "eye for an eye" mentality. Was he shouted down? Was he removed from the stage?
That's an extremely relevant story. That speaker could be the impetus of greater violence. IT IS a story, even if it was an outlier at the event. Many rallies include hours of pablum and moments of either extremism or poignancy. Journalism routinely covers THOSE MOMENTS in detail.
Basically Mr. Thompson didn't like that the moment of extremist speech was not in line with what he personally wanted to highlight and quit because the paper didn't agree with him on that.
That seems...like there's more to the story.
How many rallies have messages like that at all?
Any Tea Party rallies say stuff like that?
The outlier is always the news. Dog bites man-not an outlier. Man bites dog is.
The 30 year-old wasn't in the news business. He was in the activist business. All he was saying to his boss was, "You can't say that!"
The public threat was the most notable event of the rally, thus it was reported. So I hope the 30 year-old enjoys serving coffee in a chain store and virtue signaling the night away on his forthcoming,predictable blog. I would have fired him after his first comment.
TL;DR version: Angry editor ragequits over paper's failure to bury the lede
I suspect he gives himself too much credit.
I'm with the original headline. A turd in a punchbowl is the story - not the fact that the punch was made with real passionfruit pulp. But I would be very surprised if the protest resignation of a 30yo editor moved the needle.
That's a pretty key 'outlier' and has been repeated by BLM heads all around the country- for weeks. Including on an interview with Martha McCallum on Fox News weeks ago. It sure sounded like a threat to me. I would say to take them at their word and act accordingly.
MayBee said...
How many rallies have messages like that at all?
Any Tea Party rallies say stuff like that?
9/1/20, 7:33 AM
No, they spoke about scary things like smaller government and less taxes. Obama called us enemies for that, and Joe Biden called us barbarians.
Except perhaps at the local weekly level, there are no such things as "journalists" today.
THEOLDMAN
"John Wilkes Booth Strays From Script"
Why was the dude making the threat wearing a flower pot on his head?
"Journalism routinely covers THOSE MOMENTS [of either extremism or poignancy] in detail."
"Journalism" may have done that at one time, but "Journalism" today is about staying on-message. Those moments get covered, but with a pillow, till they stop moving (to quote the great bard of Iowa).
It is a very modern journ-o-lism story, as it reveals the works, like the Jour_no_list scandal did. You see modern journalism is about setting the narrative with a headline and burying the truth deep into the story, say the fifteenth paragraph or so. Then only right wing blogs will pull the quote out and pass it around, while lefties enjoy the misleading headline. The original headline should have been “Kenosha Comes Together in Rally” not the blatant fucking truth of the dude wanting to kill “one of theirs”
Interesting that among “ours” in the speaker’s context means the three felons caught beating and chasing Rittenhouse. The thugs. Armed thugs chasing a seventeen year old.
Cue Col Jessup.
said he was the only full-time Black staff member
Since his race is very important to this story, it's important to point out that, at best, he's actually a grey-eyed Quadroon.
Community journalism is such a shitty profession. Reporters can put their heart into reporting, only to watch their work become mangled in editing or framed out of context by placement or a headline. All for a wage low enough to qualify you and your family for food stamps.
If this guy put as much effort into selling real estate, in a short time he would be rich.
Yes, love, it’s all about you. You’re the brightest star in the sky.
The Tea party was what we used to mean when we said 'peaceful protest'. Pelosi took her gang of fools and a cartoonishly huge gavel on a march right through the crowd trying to instigate some trouble, and all she got was some spoken resistance.
So the Democrats had to make up lies, claiming shouted N words and spitting in black representatives faces ( didn't happen, it's on video, no spitting or N words. I was there.)
So the pattern is clear. Tea party, peaceful, orderly. No destruction, no violence, no fires or looting - in fact, they left the place cleaner than when they got there. Reporting says the opposite.
Antifa/BLM, burning, looting, beating, killing. Reporting says the opposite.
How many times must we see the truth turned upside down before most Americans realize they are being treated like idiots by people who hate them?
one outlier falling within a flood of positive was enough to get Kenosha set on fire to begin with.
It's one thing to find a person on the edge of the crowd who says something crazy and pretend that they captured the moment, it is quite another to accurately quote a featured speaker. So what if he was the only one to say that? He said it on stage into a microphone and he wasn't run off the field.
"It only took me quitting."
How nice that he did the only thing he could have done to make the journalism profession just a little better, more honest, and more professional. I wish him luck in his new career at Starbucks.
A bit OT, but the charges against Rittenhouse are looking ever more politically contrived. See The Charges Against Kyle Rittenhouse. The article has convenient links to the relevant WI statutes. Apparently both of the guys he killed had a hand on his rifle at the time, and the third one, the one he just wounded was pointing a handgun at him (that being a felon could not legally possess). All put him in reasonable fear of imminent death or great bodily injury. Moreover, WI apparently doesn’t have a Retreat Doctrine (and he was trying to flee anyway at the time he was attacked from behind). And as long as the rifle he was carrying was legal under WI and US law (no evidence that it wasn’t), he was old enough to possess it. Moreover, there is no evidence of the premeditation required for First Degree Murder (instead, he was reacting to deadly threats against him).
Jacob Blake had once already assaulted the woman who called the police and was threatening her again. This is completely buried by the paper and forgetting assaults and threats on a woman was completely OK by this city editor who nevertheless is suffused with his own righteousness. And if she'd been stabbed by Jacob Blake and crippled, it wouldn't be a story. There's only room in tiny liberal minds for one story from one angle with one villain and one victim.
Jacob Blake is an accused rapist and known violent felon. His victim remains nameless. NFL thugs are writing Blake’s name on their helmets. Where are the feminists? Where are ANY women standing up for (nameless victim)? Does Goodell really think ill tune in to watch the shitshow ballgame as they CELEBRATE FELONS?
Used to be that people said, "Dog bites man isn't news, man bites dog is news."
Under that rubric, the one who goes off-massage and threatens murder would be the news, the people "on message" are just same old same old.
Now, it's only news when it fits "the narrative." And if the narrative is insane or deeply false, so what?
Trump visits Kenosha today. Today's above the fold headline in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "Trump mischaracterizes Kenosha protest shooting, defends Rittenhouse on eve of visit to city roiled by unrest, violence."
The evidence? From the story:
The president also mischaracterized the incident in which Kyle Rittenhouse was accused of using an assault-style rifle.
“That was an interesting situation, you saw the same tape that I saw,” Trump said Monday during a White House news conference. “He was trying to get away from them, I guess, looks like, and he fell and then they very violently attacked him and it was something we're looking at right now and it's under investigation."
"I guess, he was in very big trouble, he probably would have been killed," Trump added.
At the point of the evening the president describes, the teen had already shot and killed one protester, according to charging documents and video footage.
https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/08/31/trump-doesnt-condemn-rittenhouse-mischaracterizes-kenosha-shooting-visit-wisconsin/5679100002/
That is all the writers cite to establish the grossly misleading headline. Someone is mischaracterizing the events, but it isn't Trump. It's almost like you cannot trust journalists to be accurate or fair.
The url also uses the "Trump doesn't condemn Rittenhouse" line. Very clear that anyone pushing back against the BLM, anarchists, Antifa, looters, rioters and arsonists who are allowed to cause mayhem will face prosecution from leftist DA's and persecution from the media who are sympathetic to the leftist cause.
This editor no doubt has a fine career awaiting him at the Times, since he has a Timesman's sense of how to bury the news after the jump.
What's that? He didn't go to an elite school? Oh, well, wouldn't fit in at the Times.
And the speaker who threatened to kill the police was the president of the group holding the rally.
Not like he was some outsider storming the stage to make them look bad.
Most people would be scared to death to quit their job, even over something serious, especially these days.
But this commie cocksucker quits on a whim knowing full well he will become a minor leftie celebrity and will get rehired at another Pravda rag in no time at all.
No media bias...none at all.
"Mr. Heisse responded, “Yes you should calm down. That is a public threat, and it is an exact quote at a rally that was to that point totally on message.”
So the executive editor Heisse stated the facts of the matter, but someone changed the headline anyway?
The editor was biased, and the headline was subsequently altered to reflect that bias. Thompson thinks this makes him look good. Probably to certain eyes it does....I don't think he'll be working at Starbucks any time soon. He's probably already got an advance on the book he will write on his travails. Movie rights are in negotiation....It's distressing to see how many people are willing to close ranks behind this Jacob Blake character. Blake is a bad guy. If you had the bad luck to live within his orbit, you could not look to him for support or sustenance but only chaos and menace. The cops had to negotiate his arrest. They may have screwed up, but Blake certainly deserves a large part of the blame. How do you negotiate a peaceful arrest with a violent felon? How do you negotiate with people who feel they have a right to burn down your store as a way of facilitating police reform?
Fifty people stage a protest. 100,000 stay home and go about their lives. What gets reported?
Blogger bgates said..."one outlier falling within a flood of positive was enough to get Kenosha set on fire to begin with."
Exactly so.
Though I strongly suspect it wasn't the trigger, it was an excuse.
"He said it on stage into a microphone and he wasn't run off the field.
Similarly, Biden and the rest of the democrats keep their yap closed for three months in the face of rioting and now we're supposed to believe they didn't support it.
Yes, and the “outlier” was booed off the platform, condemned by the participants and removed from a position of leadership in the “movement.”
What! He wasn’t?
Funny how anything said by any “right-winger”, however ridiculous, is immediately attributed to Trump and his supporters. While aggressive remarks and actions by members of the “Resistance” are buried by the media or spun if possible. If not possible, they are “cancelled” by outraged lefties. The actors are not cancelled, only their remarks or actions and always in the context of condemning the messenger. The actors are needed since the sedition must continue. That’s why no bail rules and leftist prosecutors like Schmidt in Portland put these Democrat Brownshirts back on the streets after they are arrested.
You know, I am really getting old. It used to be when you plunked down a quarter for a newspaper you actually got real news. Good news, bad news, you were told what really happened.
Hell, I guess being able to buy a paper for a quarter already marks me as “old.”
So was it "peaceful" or "mostly peaceful"? Was that [in Whoopie speak] peaceful or peaceful peaceful?
I would say Huber and Rosenbaum are mostly peaceful these days.
TDS has had many bad effects, a major one being the destruction of the newsmedia as a reliable source of factual reporting. "All the news that's fit to print" was the NYT's original promise to its readers, and it was predicated on the premise, accepted by reader and reporter alike, that the journalist was reporting facts (who, what, when, where), with whatever context was needed to portray the facts objectively. That was always an ideal more than a reality, but at least it served as the objective. Now the same slogan has taken on a completely different, narrative-affirming meaning. Nietzsche would be proud of his handiwork.
How does democracy work without some common ground, some objectively ascertainable basis in fact that all parties find sufficiently reliable to accept? Nietzsche offered one response, mostly of the to-hell-with-all-that variety. The Althouse Blog has struggled with its own response for a while, citing the NYT and the NYPost (among others) while lamenting, e.g., the refusal of the major newspapers even to investigate and report who's doing what in the riots those outlets are instead trying hard to not-report. This article in the NYT is par for that course, offering comfort food for the same crowd that flipped out when the NYT ran an op-ed by Sen. Cotton suggesting that all necessary force should be used to stop the rioting. For that audience, the only acceptable narrative is the woke black journalist selflessly confronting the clueless (white) editor who eventually, sort-of comes around. Okie-dokie. Along the way, of course, the NYT article failed to note that the speaker quoted in the (original) headline also made the point that he was saying out loud what many in the Movement dared to say only sotto voce.
Sow what you reap.
It used to be the news told you what happened and you had to decide what to think about it.
Now the news tells you what to think about something, and you have to decide if it even happened.
For the paper's editor, this was a twofer win/win. He rid himself of an asshoe of an emotional wreck of a leftist propagandist reporter, without any trouble whatsoever, and he got to post an honest headline for a day or so.
Yes, I'm sure that's how he would judge a right-wing event.
Jacob Blake is an accused rapist and known violent felon. His victim remains nameless. NFL thugs are writing Blake’s name on their helmets. Where are the feminists?
Interesting optics where feminists kneel... crawl rather than walk.
By the same logic, reporting on a police officer shooting is not worth mentioning given all the other police officer encounters were uneventful.
"But this commie cocksucker quits on a whim knowing full well he will become a minor leftie celebrity and will get rehired at another Pravda rag in no time at all."
Probably not. There are fewer and fewer newspaper jobs every day. The Covid shutdown is killing smaller papers.
Anyone who needs to hire a 30 something journo need only to pop an ad online. There will be hundreds of responses, and the publisher will have a choice of many who are not whiny threatening attention whores.
If a speaker at a Trump rally said the same words, our hero Mr. Thompson would undoubtedly resign in protest if the headline read “Speaker at Trump Rally Strays from Message.” Of course, that wouldn’t be the headline. And we wouldn’t be reading it in a podunk local paper.
"Big Mike said...
You know, I am really getting old. It used to be when you plunked down a quarter for a newspaper you actually got real news. Good news, bad news, you were told what really happened."
You think you were getting real news in the 1980's?
The difference isn't that they were honest then and dishonest now. The difference is that we have an internet now that enables us to figure out and tell each other what they lied about.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, kill one of us we kill two of yours. The event was mostly blah, blah.
So the executive editor Heisse stated the facts of the matter, but someone changed the headline anyway?
This. Who? Why?
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