The media shoulders a lot of the blame for people misunderstanding Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill, and only those who’ve read it know it covers a lot more than sex education in elementary schools. Just today, we had The Young Turks Cenk Uygur pointing out the irony of right-wingers celebrating free speech and also the “Don’t SAY Gay” law.
Drew Holden has collected a bunch of headlines where the media eventually just dropped calling it the “so-called” Don’t Say Gay bill, showing them actively adopting the language of the bill’s activist opponents.
🧵THREAD🧵
The corporate press has gone from reporting on Florida’s parental rights legislation to advocating against it in the blink of an eye.
I break it down for @FreeBeacon, with a few callouts below.⤵️https://t.co/hdlILJG7Mo
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) April 27, 2022
Outlet after outlet went from using the bill’s actual name or indicating that critics called it the “don’t say gay” bill to adopting the misleading title without qualifier, parroting the language of progressive advocates.
It only took @CNN a week. pic.twitter.com/aImKkOGSQk
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) April 27, 2022
@nytimes, are you lumping yourselves in with the bill’s opponents?
Sure looks that way. pic.twitter.com/ptq6GHw2kr
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) April 27, 2022
These from @NPR presented without comment. pic.twitter.com/CkdUfF8PgZ
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) April 27, 2022
It took less than a month for the bill to go from being “so called” to simply called for @PBS. pic.twitter.com/Idw4cAwROp
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) April 27, 2022
If you read only @CBSNews, you would be forgiven for thinking that the name simply changed along the way from the “Parental Rights in Education” bill to the “Don’t Say Gay’ bill. pic.twitter.com/rZb1zIYaEn
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) April 27, 2022
Look I wasn’t holding out hope for anything better from @MSNBC. pic.twitter.com/wGSausRgzK
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) April 27, 2022
For @ABC it was even the same author who wrote both! @kiaraalfonseca pic.twitter.com/VT21WQpB6I
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) April 27, 2022
But my favorite had to be @AlJazeera, an outlet owned by the government of Qatar, where the death penalty is still on the books for homosexuality. pic.twitter.com/NlHecrTL1d
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) April 27, 2022
Some outlets didn’t even bother to describe the bill as anything but how partisan activists named it, like @washingtonpost, @politico, @axios and @voxdotcom (go figure) pic.twitter.com/mG5gxL6YPw
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) April 27, 2022
This is why so many people have lost faith in the media.
When corporate outlets can’t help but become partisan actors, why would anyone think they can be trusted to call balls and strikes on the issues?
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) April 27, 2022
Language matters. We’ve gotta push back against this implicit advocacy if we want to create enough space for reasonable, fact-based debate to exist in our public square.
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) April 27, 2022
But the Biden administration, Barack Obama, Twitter, Jeffrey Goldberg and The Atlantic, Brian Stelter and CNN and so many smart and important people at NYT and WaPo are very concerned about misinformation! https://t.co/ANYgte8DcB
— Blame Big Government (@BlameBigGovt) April 27, 2022
And then journalists clutched their pearls when the term “groomer” started going around. Conservatives were “redefining” the word to smear opponents.
Related:
Christina Pushaw & others shred WaPo columnist’s desperate attempt to save Left’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ narrative https://t.co/BXNArbVkMj
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) April 13, 2022
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