How to Spot a Slanted Story
Spinning Riley Gaines
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.
