{"id":6269,"date":"2010-11-09T13:16:11","date_gmt":"2010-11-09T17:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=6269"},"modified":"2010-11-09T14:44:04","modified_gmt":"2010-11-09T18:44:04","slug":"how-to-create-sympathy-for-victims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/11\/09\/how-to-create-sympathy-for-victims\/","title":{"rendered":"How to create false sympathy for “victims”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adrian MacNair<\/a> gives a couple of examples of how to manipulate your reader into a sympathetic view of someone who isn’t actually a victim:<\/p>\n

\n

In the first instance we have a story about a court pondering whether a person can agree in advance to unconscious sex. It\u2019s not a particularly edifying piece of news as it discusses an Ottawa court case involving a kinky couple who were involved in sex involving asphyxiation.<\/p>\n

Although the article focuses on the court\u2019s upcoming ruling of \u201csexual autonomy\u201d, a quote from a woman\u2019s legal advocacy group, and the background details of the alleged assault, we only learn in paragraph nine about an extremely important detail:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe woman took her complaint to Ottawa police two months after the alleged assault, when she was seeking custody of the couple\u2019s toddler.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two months after the fact, while embroiled in a custody battle. Sounds like something that could have been delivered a little higher in the story. Indeed, one could rewrite it in such a way that implies this parent is using the legal system in a manipulative way that challenges sexual autonomy just to win her kid.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The second case involves the new parents who “lost their seats” on a flight:<\/p>\n

\n

And then we get to salient information in paragraph 11. The couple arrived through security 20 minutes before takeoff, and then decided to run their baby [to] the bathroom because he soiled his diaper. This diaper changing took so long that apparently the airline gave away their seats to standby. Sorry, so sad. Too bad.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Journalism students are taught to find a hook or an angle to make the story of interest to the largest possible audience, but these two cases sound like the story is actually being distorted to fit a pre-decided agenda.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adrian MacNair gives a couple of examples of how to manipulate your reader into a sympathetic view of someone who isn’t actually a victim: In the first instance we have a story about a court pondering whether a person can agree in advance to unconscious sex. It\u2019s not a particularly edifying piece of news as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,9,28],"tags":[343,213,217,255],"class_list":["post-6269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-law","category-media","tag-crimeandpunishment","tag-newspapers","tag-rights","tag-sexuality"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-1D7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6269"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6273,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6269\/revisions\/6273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}