Yesterday, The New York Times published the article “On Campus, Trump Fans Say They Need ‘Safe Spaces,'” by Anemona Hartocollis. Showcasing an appalling lack of responsible journalism, the piece attempted to present a “balanced” take on heightening tension on college campuses in the wake of the U.S. presidential election.
From the article:
According to a campuswide message from Mark Schlissel, the university’s president, bias incidents have been reported. A student walking near campus was threatened with being lit on fire because she wore a hijab. Other students were accused of being racist for supporting Mr. Trump.
A responsible journalist would never equate the act of naming an ugly truth about another person with the act of threatening another person’s life. Unlike threatening to set a Muslim woman on fire is, using the word racist is not an act of bias when the person you are referring to has taken actions that actively support overt racism—such as voting for or supporting Donald Trump.
Anyone who says otherwise, and any publication that prints such a false equivalence, is anything but “balanced”; rather, doing so furthers the oppression of marginalized peoples.
Radical Copyeditor 