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Notes -
Let's talk about the attack in New York.
Six Arrested After Explosive Devices Tossed Near Mamdani’s Home (Bloomberg)
6 arrested after homemade explosive devices at Gracie Mansion protest send people running for cover (New York Post)
This certainly seems concerning... wait... it looks like I got the news wrong. Let's check in with the newspaper of record:
Smoking Jars of Metal and Fuses Thrown at Protest Near Mayor’s House
This was no bomb. It was just a smoking jar of metal and fuses. A stunning and brave counterprotestor who just happened to have a smoking jar of metal and fuses took took the righteous and antiracist action of standing up to nazism by throwing that smoking jar of metal and fuses right into the middle of a crowd. This totally clears things up.
Wait... no.. it looks like that's not quite right. It was a bomb.
I thought the news media couldn't get worse than "firey but mostly peaceful protests." But somehow they've managed to reach a new low. At least with the "mostly peaceful" protests it's technically true. I'm sure >51% of the protests that day were peaceful and a minority set the place ablaze. But this is a clear cut case where a terrorist literally threw a bomb into a crowd, and the NYT rushes to blame the victims for causing unrest and smear them as "vile white supremacists"
I mean the "smoking jars" link quite literally says that the PD hadn't yet determined if it was a real bomb or just window dressing. I mean, yeah at some point you have to judge how to present uncertain information, and bias can creep in, but news is hard and often the desire of end-users for news outstrips the pace at which the highest-quality information can come out, much less be processed and contextualized appropriately by journalists.
Again, news is hard. Nothing new here. I don't get why this is suddenly "a new low", this is just ... how news works?? Savvy readers were provided plenty of information in the NYT article itself to make their own judgement.
And it's not like that's the only thing the NYT has produced. 3 minutes ago I see this (I think new, separate article) headline and its "dek" (I learned a new word! the summary thing) saying:
And to be fair, there's a bit of genuine ambiguity here: what do we call it? An IED? A grenade? A bomb? Some of these definitions strongly imply a certain amount of actual explosives, and that seemed to be the main sticking point/source of doubt, yes? You can "design something to be deadly" without, you know, successfully making it deadly. Obviously the device did NOT explode, so on a pedantic level "smoking device" is probably the most technically accurate term even if people with brains (you and I) obviously know that it's probably intended to be something like a grenade. I don't have a sub but I assume there's more, up to date info inside. Or are you bothered by a lack of an update on the OG article? Where it's positioned in relative terms to the other news?
Like sure, you can call it bias. That's fine. But I don't think it's this horror show of propaganda you're imagining.
After the 371st time noticing, it’s a horror show of propaganda, and we’re not imagining it.
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