A couple of days ago, I saw a striking headline that Target was suing a man who had heroically saved a teenage girl from a knife-wielding attacker. Now, as with cat and dog persons, the world divides into Target or Walmart people and I shop at Target when forced to choose the lesser of two evils. So naturally, this click bait headline worked it's siren magic and drew me in to read the story. What was immediately obvious was that the article, on the Federalist website, was highly abbreviated and could not be treated as a news report at all. Using the meager details gleaned from the Federalist story, I searched for more background and was able to find out a little more.
The story, as I understood it, is basically this: a mentally ill man, Leon Walls attacked a man near a Target store in Pennsylvania. Michael Turner who Target is suing, and some friends including the stabbed man chased after Walls as he ran into the Target store. At some point, Walls then sized a teenage girl as a hostage and apparently was demanding that he be allowed to leave unmollested when someone jumped him from behind. In the ensuing fracas, the girl first broke free but then Walls lunged forward and stabbed her before being finally subdued. Till here the article in the Federalist is not in any disagreement with the facts, though it does suggest that Walls stabbed the teenager first while other articles suggest that he was trying to use her as a human shield and escape. Where the truth gets lost totally however is in the characterization of the lawsuits - the Federalist suggests, but its tone and omissions that Target is suing a hero out of vindictiveness but conveniently leaves out the fact that the family of the teen sued Target first alleging that the store failed to protect them and Target responded by counter-suing both Turner and Walls. This distinction is crucial, because the omission hides the fact that Target's suit is a sad but typical part of American civil justice. If Target were to fight the suit brought by Allison Meadows' family, they would almost certainly lose or have to settle out of court - we are after all the same people who agreed with a plaintiff that McDonalds was in the wrong when the plaintiff burned herself when she spilled the hot coffee she's just bought over her legs while exiting the drive-through lane and since then we've had lids that remind us that hot coffee is in fact and contrary to what we may believe, actually quite hot - and so they counter-sue the other parties involved so that they may present the full story before a jury and muddy the waters enough to avoid paying the full demanded amount. They do not expect to collect any money from Turner, and certainly not from Wells who was sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison, but they do hope to show a jury that the attack was caused by others and was not solely their fault, and avoid paying damages.
Now the rights and wrongs of this case are beyond the scope of my little rant here, but the story is illustrative of one of the greatest problems we face in today's world. We are drowning in information, but it's so much that we cannot really handle it all. Conveniently, there are numerous organizations, like the Federalist, Slate, Mother Jones, Breitbart and others that package it into bite sized pieces. Or rather they pick out the stories most likely to interest their target audience. While this might still leave a void in our overall understanding of the world, it would be no major problem. But many of these organizations do not stop with picking and choosing the news they highlight for their audience - instead, like this article from the Federalist, they go several steps beyond and snip out key elements and spin it to suit their own agenda. And unfortunately, their audience is blissfully unaware of or willingly blinded to the actual facts. In this case, a quick perusal of comments by the Federalist's readers showed that they had accepted the narrative that the author wanted to project, and this despite the open attempt to tie this case (from 2013! ) to Target's recent decision to extend equal privileges to members of the LGBT community as to its heterosexual patrons. In this case the author was not particularly subtle in her spinning of the story or omission of the pertinent facts. Yet her readers, with their political views already in tune with hers looked past all inadequacies in the reporting and treated it with the same reverence that my family did the BBC World Service when I was still in short clothes.
Let's ignore for a moment the fact that a likely libertarian-leaning group is somehow against a decision by Target to extend freedom and equality to all members and instead demanding that we regulate the use of restrooms through government action. Let's look past the omission of the facts of the story that the judge sentencing the attacker knew that the man needed medical treatment but in the face of program cuts had no choice but to incarcerate him in prison instead. Let's treat, for the sake of argument, as spurious or irrelevant, Target's claim that Turner and his friends chased Walls with baseball bats (even if they had good intentions to simply hold him till the police arrived) and that they helped create the conditions that led to Allison Meadows' stabbing. What we are still left with is a website that purposely disseminates only a portion of the truth, spinning it to suit their own narrative and very knowingly hiding any and every fact that works against their position. And their readers, in many cases will take this story as one hundred percent fact and base their future positions and actions on that very suspect foundation. This is a problem that cuts across all ideological lines. Since Michael Turner is a black man, The Root also weighed in with their own version and did as bad a job of presenting the facts as the Federalist. I didn't find the story in any of liberal-leaning news sites I usually use, but that is less a bias on their part (though the lack of story would confirm that bias in the eyes of most hard line conservatives) as a reflection of the lack of any actual story here. Not to mention that it is actually a three year old story and that it centers on the most common of American behavior - person suffers loss, person sues anyone and everyone trying to get compensated for loss.
But in a world where we are forced or at least led by way of least resistance to choose our sources of news, it's worth reflecting that the news we obtain is all too often not the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Equally unfortunately, we tend to believe our preferred sources and see all conflicting views as biased and untruthful. In this case, the gaps and untruths confirm my inherent suspicion about right-wing news sites, but rationally, I know that conservatives would find similar if hopefully less striking cases on liberal sources. And in a world of deep partisan bias, one man's truth is another's lies and sources that I see as impartial and honest such as the Associated Press, Reuters and the New York Times are regarded with deep suspicion on the opposite side of the political divide. In the end, all one can hope is that more people would draw their news from a wide spectrum of sources and paradoxically question all facts that match their own views - the more the story presented fits our narrative, the more we should question it and seek additional contrarian (but trustworthy) sources. Those sources may often present a viewpoint that challenges our cherished view of the world and in doing so does us more service than a hundred corroborating stories.
The story, as I understood it, is basically this: a mentally ill man, Leon Walls attacked a man near a Target store in Pennsylvania. Michael Turner who Target is suing, and some friends including the stabbed man chased after Walls as he ran into the Target store. At some point, Walls then sized a teenage girl as a hostage and apparently was demanding that he be allowed to leave unmollested when someone jumped him from behind. In the ensuing fracas, the girl first broke free but then Walls lunged forward and stabbed her before being finally subdued. Till here the article in the Federalist is not in any disagreement with the facts, though it does suggest that Walls stabbed the teenager first while other articles suggest that he was trying to use her as a human shield and escape. Where the truth gets lost totally however is in the characterization of the lawsuits - the Federalist suggests, but its tone and omissions that Target is suing a hero out of vindictiveness but conveniently leaves out the fact that the family of the teen sued Target first alleging that the store failed to protect them and Target responded by counter-suing both Turner and Walls. This distinction is crucial, because the omission hides the fact that Target's suit is a sad but typical part of American civil justice. If Target were to fight the suit brought by Allison Meadows' family, they would almost certainly lose or have to settle out of court - we are after all the same people who agreed with a plaintiff that McDonalds was in the wrong when the plaintiff burned herself when she spilled the hot coffee she's just bought over her legs while exiting the drive-through lane and since then we've had lids that remind us that hot coffee is in fact and contrary to what we may believe, actually quite hot - and so they counter-sue the other parties involved so that they may present the full story before a jury and muddy the waters enough to avoid paying the full demanded amount. They do not expect to collect any money from Turner, and certainly not from Wells who was sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison, but they do hope to show a jury that the attack was caused by others and was not solely their fault, and avoid paying damages.
Now the rights and wrongs of this case are beyond the scope of my little rant here, but the story is illustrative of one of the greatest problems we face in today's world. We are drowning in information, but it's so much that we cannot really handle it all. Conveniently, there are numerous organizations, like the Federalist, Slate, Mother Jones, Breitbart and others that package it into bite sized pieces. Or rather they pick out the stories most likely to interest their target audience. While this might still leave a void in our overall understanding of the world, it would be no major problem. But many of these organizations do not stop with picking and choosing the news they highlight for their audience - instead, like this article from the Federalist, they go several steps beyond and snip out key elements and spin it to suit their own agenda. And unfortunately, their audience is blissfully unaware of or willingly blinded to the actual facts. In this case, a quick perusal of comments by the Federalist's readers showed that they had accepted the narrative that the author wanted to project, and this despite the open attempt to tie this case (from 2013! ) to Target's recent decision to extend equal privileges to members of the LGBT community as to its heterosexual patrons. In this case the author was not particularly subtle in her spinning of the story or omission of the pertinent facts. Yet her readers, with their political views already in tune with hers looked past all inadequacies in the reporting and treated it with the same reverence that my family did the BBC World Service when I was still in short clothes.
Let's ignore for a moment the fact that a likely libertarian-leaning group is somehow against a decision by Target to extend freedom and equality to all members and instead demanding that we regulate the use of restrooms through government action. Let's look past the omission of the facts of the story that the judge sentencing the attacker knew that the man needed medical treatment but in the face of program cuts had no choice but to incarcerate him in prison instead. Let's treat, for the sake of argument, as spurious or irrelevant, Target's claim that Turner and his friends chased Walls with baseball bats (even if they had good intentions to simply hold him till the police arrived) and that they helped create the conditions that led to Allison Meadows' stabbing. What we are still left with is a website that purposely disseminates only a portion of the truth, spinning it to suit their own narrative and very knowingly hiding any and every fact that works against their position. And their readers, in many cases will take this story as one hundred percent fact and base their future positions and actions on that very suspect foundation. This is a problem that cuts across all ideological lines. Since Michael Turner is a black man, The Root also weighed in with their own version and did as bad a job of presenting the facts as the Federalist. I didn't find the story in any of liberal-leaning news sites I usually use, but that is less a bias on their part (though the lack of story would confirm that bias in the eyes of most hard line conservatives) as a reflection of the lack of any actual story here. Not to mention that it is actually a three year old story and that it centers on the most common of American behavior - person suffers loss, person sues anyone and everyone trying to get compensated for loss.
But in a world where we are forced or at least led by way of least resistance to choose our sources of news, it's worth reflecting that the news we obtain is all too often not the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Equally unfortunately, we tend to believe our preferred sources and see all conflicting views as biased and untruthful. In this case, the gaps and untruths confirm my inherent suspicion about right-wing news sites, but rationally, I know that conservatives would find similar if hopefully less striking cases on liberal sources. And in a world of deep partisan bias, one man's truth is another's lies and sources that I see as impartial and honest such as the Associated Press, Reuters and the New York Times are regarded with deep suspicion on the opposite side of the political divide. In the end, all one can hope is that more people would draw their news from a wide spectrum of sources and paradoxically question all facts that match their own views - the more the story presented fits our narrative, the more we should question it and seek additional contrarian (but trustworthy) sources. Those sources may often present a viewpoint that challenges our cherished view of the world and in doing so does us more service than a hundred corroborating stories.
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