Who does a story question, and who does it explain?
By reading carefully, you can spot the slant of any news story you come across.
Consider this headline in The Detroit News:
Who does a story question, and who does it explain?
From the headline on, the story presents Gaines as a “critic of transgender athletes.”
What they’re saying is: Gaines wants only women to compete in women’s sports. They’re presenting this as an oddity rather than the norm it is.
This is the news at its worst. At its best, the news tells you things you do not know. Here, instead, the writer has chosen to tell you what to think.
The story questions Gaines and why she would dare object to a man in the locker room, in the pool, and on the trophy stand of a woman’s sport.
In an alternate universe, Gaines would be presented as a defender of women’s sports. The hed could just as easily, and probably more accurately, describe her as “Champion of Women’s Sports” than as “Critic of Transgender Athletes.” It was only 50 years prior to Gaines’ ordeal that Title IX became the law of the land in America.
Gaines is trying to stop the flood.
The story explains away men competing in women’s sports as a matter of “inclusion.”
Reporter Kim Kozlowski writes:
“Gaines has since become a high-profile critic of transgender women in women’s sports. While the number of transgender athletes is not large in numbers, it reflects a bitter culture war pitting the inclusion of transgender athletes against traditionalists who oppose it as presenting an unfair advantage.”
But exclusivity is the entire point of women’s sports. Feature, not bug. Only in the upside down world is a woman vilified for wanting to exclude men from women’s sports.
I get that you’ve read and heard and been told that trans women are women. It’s not true, as the modifier lets on. If you use the word “gender,” you’re part of the problem. You have muddied the waters. You have legitimized the idea that self-identification matters and should be counted.
“Ain’t but two genders” is a lie too. There are two sexes and zero genders, because gender is made up. You can’t live in fantasyland, then get shocked when you’re asked to play make believe.
The news lies to you because it lies to itself.
The story quotes leaders of Adrian College as “embracing the debate.” It offers a critical reaction from Twitter (X), a single account calling the speech “a slap in the face of LGBTQ students.”
Of course, the Tweeter is never interviewed. They—excuse me, she—already served her purpose. They said the thing that allows this sentence:
“The development has generated criticism of Adrian College’s choice of Gaines addressing the Class of 2024.”
With that, the news has its desired “flashpoint.” A singular criticism, offered by a Twitter rando, shades both the hed and the lede.
The news should tell us new things.
But at its worst, it looks like this. It tells us what to think. And it sells us narratives that few people believe, based on the thinnest of evidence. It could take as little as one Tweet to smear you as racist or anti-trans, and Michigan’s best newspaper will faithfully repeat the claim.
If they can do it to Riley Gaines, they can do it to you.
Only in decoding the techniques of the slanted story, and sharing what we see, can the public make itself impervious to slanted stories. Only then can we demand more honest reports. We’re not falling for it anymore.
We need to read with a red pen.
When you see something, say something.
James David Dickson is an independent journalist in Michigan and the host of The Enjoyer Podcast. Follow him on X at @downi75. He is the biggest fan and biggest critic of journalism in Michigan.
