Here’s a question that would seem to have a simple, obvious answer: When is it ok to describe an alleged multiple murderer with a history of violence as a “gentle” man?
The correct answer is of course “never,” but the New York Times managed to get this question wrong in a profile of alleged Planned Parenthood killer Robert Lewis Dear over the weekend.
Here’s the opening of the story, preserved for posterity by journalist Jack Mirkinson:
— Jack Mirkinson (@jackmirkinson) November 29, 2015
Yep. A “a gentle loner,” except for all that violence and murdering. It’s a bit like calling someone a “Good Samaritan — who sometimes throws babies into traffic.”
After assorted folks on Twitter pointed out that “gentle” was perhaps not such a good adjective, describing-an-alleged-violent-murderer-wise, the editors quietly removed “gentle,” ultimately replacing it with “itinerant.”
But as Jim Naureckas of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) points out, this was not the only way in which the Times seemed to be weirdly giving a pass to Dear. Times writer Richard Faucett managed to work some strangely exculpatory descriptions of Dear into a profile of the shooter, as remembered by his ex-wife.
As Naureckas notes, we find the word “gentle” once again applied to a man who was, by all accounts, anything but gentle.
She recalled a big man, well-groomed, gentle and pleasant, but not much for chitchat.
The original headline to the piece,
Ex-Wife Recalls Colorado Gunman as Imperfect but a Good Man
And then there was this bit, echoing one of the standard ways in which people try to excuse domestic violence:
Mr. Dear could be angry at times, she said, sometimes angry with her. But he was the kind who usually followed a flash of anger with an apology.
Yeah, because THAT’S HOW ABUSE WORKS. Phony remorse is one of the primary ways abusers hold onto those they abuse. Hell, it’s one of the freaking stages in the Cycle of Violence:
While the Times has changed the headline of this piece, the rest of this language remains in the story, unchanged.
Naureckas makes the obvious but necessary point:
Needless to say, the New York Times is not in the habit of going to the family members of people accused of committing terror in the name of Islam and reprinting their fond recollections. Nor is that the treatment given to African-American men accused of killing cops. In fact, African-Americans killed by cops are more likely to get the “he’s no angel” treatment from the cops.
Yep.
Goddammit, New York Times, you’re a real journalism, you should know better!
Yeah, “a gentle loner who occasionally unleashed violent acts” is a contradiction in terms.
White people committing murder, are drug dealers, etc= Adorable, misguided, good loners who only needed hugs and mental help.
Everyone else= thugs, terrorists, war on Christians and white people!
More evidence
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/12/01/when-white-girls-deal-drugs-they-walk.html
The times went to print way before they got the facts in. A subsequent article by the times shows that Dear was anything but “gentle”, he was a philandering abuser:
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/12/02/us/robert-dear-planned-parenthood-shooting.html?_r=0
With notably rare exceptions, Dear was a gentle person.
@ColeYote — “Goddammit, New York Times, you’re a real journalism, you should know better!”
Unfortunately, the Times has been living off its reputation for years and is a mere shadow of it former journalistic self. The best one can say is that at least they haven’t fallen as far as The Washington Post.
Oh good, now that Dear has been established as a gentle person when not being violent, he should be put to death. There’s no question that he killed 3 people, why bother with the delay of a trial? So what if that’s not how the justice system is supposed to work, what his childhood was like, why he had no friends and his relationships with women failed is irrelevant to the fact that he murdered three people and that’s a death penalty offense.
*snorks* Yeah, dear is totally a gentle person…when not MURDERING three people or being otherwise violent.
A friend of mine notes that the same paper described the murdered Freddie Gray as “the son of an illiterate heroin addict”. Gentle? Who gives a crap: he’s obviously got BAD GENES.
This reminds me of the many people commenting that they’re “glad he killed those people at Planned Parenthood because every life is sacred.”
That headline… I can’t even…
“glad he killed those people at Planned Parenthood because every life is sacred.”
http://m.quickmeme.com/img/c3/c3f2c13ca2e4dcfa551ce8e502c1f88a49e3e759e345fa71979a627cc107ea11.jpg
@Josh Hayes — “A friend of mine notes that the same paper described the murdered Freddie Gray as ‘the son of an illiterate heroin addict’”.
That was actually in an article published yesterday by CNN, another paragon of journalistic virtue.
Even the most phenomenally violent person could not be violent the whole time. I mean, they must have been “gentle” when they were asleep, at least, and probably also while drinking a hot cup of coffee or eating linguine.
How odd the expectations. We have a white guy be seriously, fatally violent to 3 people and life-changingly violent to 9 people at least once, and serially violent or abusive quite a few other times that didn’t make the papers. But he gets those times that he was gentle memorialised in print.
Whereas… just random example, y’know… a black teen who gets killed walking outdoors gets remembered for some photo put on Facebook of himself making peace signs – I mean, gangsters use peace signs, don’t they?
I’d bet that if you asked the folks at NY Times what they were thinking they’d say something about “balance” or “a rounded picture.”
Yeah, he was lovely, except when he wasn’t.
David,
are Richard Fausset and Richard Faucett different people?
For anyone who believes that NYT is the real journalism, two words: Judith Miller. For example.
And Carly Fiorina inspired him with her false theatrics about “baby parts”. But the facts are as follows:
What Ms. Fiorina described as a “baby” being cut up for “parts” was an expiring four-month fetus, the product of a miscarriage, whose few postnatal moments of biological process (he never breathed) were posted on facebook by his parents. The pictures themselves were sickening: a tiny, vaguely human form with sealed eyes, no functional lungs, and… as yet… no skin, which they forced one of their living children to hold for the photos. As if such a terrible and pathetic exposure, and such a trauma inflicted on a child, were not hideous enough, when these images were appropriated by the “documentary” and given a dubbed voiceover, “Walter’s” parents consented to the fait accompli, because they believed in the “pro-life” cause… of inciting the murder of living adults and the orphaning of living children.
I remember in the movie Men in Black they mocked the new York times as a lousy source of journalism. I didn’t believe them until now
Reminds me of the song “Hitler Was A Sensitive Man” by Anal Cunt.
What we see here is the typical trivialization of domestic violence and violence against women in general.
Dear physically assaulted and raped one woman, and physically assaulted two others (his wives). Never paid for it in meaningful ways. And he is described as a decent man on top of that.
If his previous victims were men, we’d likely not see his violent past so easily disregarded.
Wow, that really serves as a nice punctuation to how white terrorists are treated versus even victims of color. Oh, are you an abusive, animal abusing, murdering fuck with a control streak a mile wide who wants to make women scared of you and scared of getting health care? Oh, so gentle, misunderstood, tortured, boy next door.
Are you a kid of color who someone decided to snuff out? Well, I heard someone muse that you could have theoretically smoked a joint once, so clearly you deserved to die.
It’s like the best night and day demonstration of how white terrorists are supported and excused and white terrorism is reinforced by a society that condones their actions and condemns their victims.
This just reiterates to me that sociological studies should be a fundamental part of journalism degrees. Many journalists have a startling lack of understanding of the underlying causes of certain issues in society, and for their contribution to the status quo mentality.
Meanwhile on CNN, Freddie Gray is identified as “the son of an illiterate heroin addict.”
Gah, I somehow missed Josh Hayes and Judas Peckerwood!
He only assaulted his wives! How very gentle of him! What a sweetheart, that’s an indicator of his deep love for women, no?
Gah! Mammothed… And I saw the lack of / in the second tag immediately after I clicked “Post comment”
So how often did these occasional unleashing of violence happen? “He was totally gentle except for all those times he’d attack people.” How was that allowed to be published?? Much less put into the opening paragraph.