Monday, April 09, 2007

The One Where I Write a Headline on Griffith's City Paper Piece in the Manner That the Tennessean Headlined the Garcia Trial

Just try and convince me that the illegal immigration imbroglio is not about race, is not concerned with targeting Hispanics, and is not focused on Mexicans, when I open the Tennessean to see this headline blaring at me and coding illegals-in-general with the horrendous sins of one. And in Nashville, illegals-in-general means a specific set of darker-skinned, Spanish-speaking people. If this trial concerned an Anglo from Canada or England or Australia, I bet that "Illegal Immigrant" appears no where in the headline.

On an unrelated subject, City Paper reporter Amy Griffith shows this morning that she has not done her research on when the Sounds season opens (she concludes, "The Sounds ... will open the 2007 [season] Thursday against the New Orleans Zephyrs."), in spite of the ubiquitous news of last Thursday's Opening Day. But if I were to write a headline about that in the manner of this morning's Tennessean's screamer on the Garcia trial, it might run something like this:

Girl Reporter Has Nashville Sounds Opening Season a Week After They Actually Did in Analysis of Dead Ballpark Deal

The fact that the headline describes Ms. Griffith's ostensible gender and that it has done so with a diminutive has absolutely nothing to do with her error about the Sounds Opening Day. Likewise, the fact that an individual is an illegal immigrant should have borderline bearing at best on the news that he is going to plead guilty to the heinous crime of killing two people.

The overwhelming majority of people who kill other people in America while intoxicated are legal citizens, not illegal immigrants. The Tennessean needs to keep its eye on the ball.


UPDATE: Amy Griffith's error about the start of the 2007 baseball season is edited out of the hard copy edition.

UPDATE II: Griffith's error has been removed (sometime between 11:00a and 2:00p) from the on-line edition. Nevertheless, my point remains.

UPDATE III: Here's a screen shot of Griffith's non-edited online ending, which was viewable earlier today:

1 comment:

  1. You are right on with this post. The Tennessean's focus on the fact that this man is here illegally--as if that is the biggest deal here--makes me wonder if they would want us to feel better about the crime he committed had he been here legally. "Oh, he was a citizen? Well, carry on then." Right.

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