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Wednesday Morning Rant

Yet They Wonder

I still manage to marvel at the utter absence of introspection within the press. For as much as they complain about "loss of trust" and caterwaul about the "dangerous culture of disrespect," they still decline to consider why nobody trusts them and everybody hates them. It isn't hard to figure out, but they also have a vested interest in not figuring it out.

I recently read a lengthy article by the Denver Post that is a shining example of why people hate the press. It's an "expose" of an X account called "DoBetterDNVR," which covers the vagrancy and illegal alien problems in that city. The city government hates it, as does the city's main newspaper. The account is apparently both popular and not faith-promoting, so the Post decided to cover it.

I am not familiar with the account, but this article was fascinating. It's such an obvious hit piece that it almost defies belief and it's worth reading the whole thing.

DoBetterDNVR is a household name in some Denver circles and has grown to a point where it impacts city politics, drawing the attention of Denver officials and prompting at least one city investigation.
...
The account routinely excoriates Denver's current leaders for the way the city approaches addiction and homelessness, and calls instead for tough-on-crime solutions like making it a felony to possess small amounts of drugs, shifting away from harm-reduction programs and forcing people into mandatory treatment.

They're mean to city officials and don't toe the party line. That's it. That's the problem, and why the Post decided to write a hit piece where they dox various contributors to the account and made it clear that they want to dox the operator.

But, of course, that isn't why the Post claims it had to do a rare piece of investigative reporting in this case. The stated reason for the article is that the account isn't run by "real" journalists and so sows "misinformation."

"Regular people can commit acts of journalism," said Patrick Ferrucci, chair of the Department of Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. "They can disseminate important information, and that's great. But that's only a piece of what journalism does. Journalism often puts that information into context, which makes it more useful for people. And, more importantly, journalism is not just defined by the end product. It is defined by the process that goes into it. Ethics, norms, verification -- all these things that make the information that goes out different."

What a nasty bit of condescension. Journalism isn't about facts and events, it's about "contextualizing" the facts and events. It isn't an means to an end, it's its own end. It's a "process," not a product. It's odd to see the chair of the J-School define "journalism" as performance art, but we've also long since gone through the looking glass.

The Post also has no information straight from the horse's mouth. When someone claiming to run the account called them, they made it clear that they didn't want it:

The Post's policy on using anonymous sources requires the reporter to know the person's identity even if the person's name is not published. Additionally, The Post declined to grant anonymity to the caller, who then refused to do an interview in which they would be named.

Gee, I wonder why. The Post declined to extend to this person the same courtesy they give to your average drug dealer, spent a big chunk of this article outlining the process it used to identify and then dox various DoBetterDNVR contributors and then feigned bafflement when someone claiming to be in charge showed them the level of trust they'd earned. Even if the person was faking his or her role in the account, the Post could have agreed to anonymity and then done verification. If didn't pan out, they could have not used it. But they didn't even try.

Their vaunted journalistic standards and practices aside, just what is all this dangerous misinformation being peddled by DoBetterDNVR? The Post deigns to provide an example - and in so doing, provides a much stronger example of their own tendencies in this regard:

In October, DoBetterDNVR alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua at the Cedar Run apartments on Oneida Street and at a second complex were meeting Denver firefighters when they arrived on site for emergency calls, questioning the firefighters about their purpose and then "escorting" the first responders through the apartment complex. Denver police, the account claimed, were usually "too busy" to provide backup for the firefighters.

"It's obvious that TdA has infiltrated both of these complexes in Denver," read the post, which cited no sources.

The unverified claim prompted an investigation within the Denver Fire Department, according to emails between Chief Desmond Fulton and Councilwoman Amanda Sawyer. Fulton told Sawyer that a fire operations chief immediately called over to the fire station in the area to ask about the claim, and that a police commander, fire division chief and fire district chief also visited the fire station to hear from firefighters directly.

The officials found the firefighters had no "negative interactions with TdA," Fulton wrote in a Nov. 1 email, referring to the gang. They also discovered that Denver police "have been very responsive and have been onsite for most of our calls to these addresses."

"Members at Station 19 have been followed and watched by male members while on medical calls, but not interfered with in the course of performing their duties," Fulton wrote.

Absolutely fascinating, and I don't know if the Post writer even realizes what she did here.

Assertion: Tren de Aragua meets and "escorts" firefighters and EMTs when they come to the apartment complex.
Evidence presented that the assertion is misinformation: "Members at Station 19 have been followed and watched by male members while on medical calls, but not interfered with in the course of performing their duties," Fulton wrote.
See the problem? Chief Fulton did not dispute DoBetterDNVR's assertion, he confirmed it. Tren de Aragua intercepts firefighters and EMTs at the complex and follows them around. DoBetterDNVR didn't say that TdA attacks the emergency personnel, just that they intercept and "escort" the emergency personnel - something their Chief confirmed in a quote that the Post uses to prove that the assertion is "misinformation." The mind fairly boggles.

Assertion: Denver PD is usually "too busy" to provide backup.
Evidence presented that the assertion is misinformation: "They also discovered that Denver police "have been very responsive and have been onsite for most of our calls to these addresses."
These are not quite the same thing. Is "onsite" the same as "providing backup?" If they are onsite, why are TdA affiliates allowed to insinuate themselves into fire department activities? Not sure. DoBetterDNVR's claim could be overblown, or it could be face-saving by the various departments, outright lies all around or anything in between. It's hard to tell because the Post does the same thing here that it lambastes DoBetterDNVR for doing - relying on anonymized summaries. They quote officials by name, but present none of the evidence for their claims. If the police are there for "most" calls, how many is "most?" Did they actually count? Ordinarily, this wouldn't be a problem but the Post is spilling out thousands of words about their reliability and thoroughness and how awful DoBetterDNVR is. The onus is on them to be complete, and they haven't done it.

This article is latest act in the city's war on DoBetterDNVR:

Until this spring, the Denver Police Department's X account regularly answered DoBetterDNVR's public questions about incidents. The department stopped doing so in March, police spokesman Doug Schepman said, in a decision that came about "with guidance from the mayor's office."

"The volume and frequency of the requests reached levels that became onerous," Schepman said, noting that the mayor's office also determined the account's content was "not solution-oriented."

And then the Post does a hit piece. It had to. It is part of the power system in Denver. If an organization - however loose - is not faith-promoting, it must be destroyed.

And the Post is unrepentant about its doxing of the thoughtcriminals in Denver:

Palacios had little sympathy for concerns that revealing the women connected to DoBetterDNVR constitutes doxing.

"Don't dish out what you can't take," she said.

Charming.

And yet, tomorrow, the press will once again be full of stories wherein journalists feign confusion about why they are held in such contempt.