{"id":17889,"date":"2015-12-06T11:43:18","date_gmt":"2015-12-06T18:43:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=17889"},"modified":"2015-12-06T15:58:42","modified_gmt":"2015-12-06T22:58:42","slug":"making-shit-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=17889","title":{"rendered":"Making Shit Up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Every now and then I get so mad at traditional news media I swear I&#8217;m going to quit watching TV and reading newspapers and keep up with the world through non-traditional media instead.\u00a0But online news is every bit\u00a0as\u00a0misleading and inaccurate. Witness this, from <a href=\"http:\/\/gawker.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Gawker<\/a> today:<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Screen Shot 2015-12-06 at 10.03.06 AM\" href=\"http:\/\/gawker.com\/chipotle-refuses-to-take-the-diarrhea-burrito-off-its-m-1746426180\" target=\"_blank\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"click to read full article on Gawker\" src=\"https:\/\/farm1.staticflickr.com\/688\/23538829126_de4c5d63b1_z.jpg\" alt=\"Screen Shot 2015-12-06 at 10.03.06 AM\" width=\"640\" height=\"471\" \/><\/a><script src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Okay, you probably think that&#8217;s\u00a0funny, and I do too. Diarrhea humor, after all, is the Rolls Royce\u00a0of humor. But if you are Chipotle, you might be thinking about taking legal action against Gawker.<\/p>\n<p>Here,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/gawker.com\/chipotle-refuses-to-take-the-diarrhea-burrito-off-its-m-1746426180\" target=\"_blank\">read the full article on Gawker<\/a>. I&#8217;ll wait.<\/p>\n<p>Good, you&#8217;re back. As you just read, what the writer in fact\u00a0reports is that 52\u00a0people in nine states have been affected by a strain of E. coli, and that 46 of them reported eating at a Chipotle\u00a0fast food restaurant beforehand. Symptoms experienced by those affected included\u00a0abdominal cramping, diarrhea, vomiting, and fever. Gawker goes on to say that E. coli can, in rare cases, lead to death\u00a0(implying, though not saying, that some of the victims who ate at Chipotle&#8217;s died). Serious, yes? Gawker implicates a particular Chipotle menu item, the\u00a0&#8220;signature burrito,&#8221; as being &#8220;diarrhea-inducing,&#8221; describing it\u00a0as &#8220;a menu item that is as unpleasant as it is unpopular.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So why doesn&#8217;t Chipotle take its signature\u00a0burrito off the menu? Well, as the article makes clear,\u00a0there is no signature diarrhea-inducing burrito. No one knows what Chipotle\u00a0menu item contains E. coli, or even if the outbreak can in fact be traced to Chipotle.\u00a0Per the article, the &#8220;source of the outbreak\u2014meaning which product in particular contains the strain of E. coli\u2014has not yet been identified.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Is E. coli in the meat, the guacamole, the salsa, the lettuce? Is it even coming from Chipotle? No one knows yet. Nevertheless, Gawker reports, the chain\u00a0\u201chas taken aggressive actions to implement indus Throughout its supply chain.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What, exactly, is this &#8220;indus&#8221; being implemented? I ran Gawker&#8217;s\u00a0quote through Google, which led me to <a href=\"http:\/\/ir.chipotle.com\/phoenix.zhtml?c=194775&amp;p=irol-newsArticle&amp;ID=2120228\" target=\"_blank\">Chipotle&#8217;s actual statement<\/a>: &#8220;Chipotle Mexican Grill (NYSE:CMG) has taken aggressive actions to implement industry-leading food safety and food handling practices in all of its restaurants and throughout its supply chain.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So Gawker, in addition to libeling a corporation\u00a0by falsely claiming\u00a0it serves a\u00a0&#8220;signature diarrhea-inducing burrito,&#8221; can&#8217;t be bothered to accurately cut &amp; paste a sentence\u00a0from the corporation&#8217;s official statement? Or even link to it?<\/p>\n<p>I know, I know, never trust a corporation to tell the truth. I have to say, though,\u00a0that this corporation\u00a0appears\u00a0to be aware of the problem and taking action. After all, doing so is in its best interest, no? I don&#8217;t eat at Chipotle and have no reason to defend it. I do read Gawker, though, and I&#8217;d like to defend it as a worthy aggregator\u00a0of news, but now I can&#8217;t. What is Gawker trying to do with this kind of &#8220;reporting,&#8221; other than frightening people? Is it\u00a0trying to shame Chipotle into shutting down its restaurants (as if that would ever happen) &#8230; or are they just trying to get clicks?<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know much about the online news blog business, but I&#8217;m pretty sure Gawker&#8217;s writers get\u00a0paid. That makes them professionals. I\u00a0write for fun (and for free).\u00a0But by god if I decide to quote someone\u00a0or relay factual information, I look stuff\u00a0up first to make sure I&#8217;ve got it right, and I show my work by linking to my sources.\u00a0I proofread my posts before I click &#8220;publish.&#8221; If I&#8217;m offering opinion or simply making shit up, I say so.<\/p>\n<p>What the fucking hell, Gawker? And why should I read another thing you write?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every now and then I get so mad at traditional news media I swear I&#8217;m going to quit watching TV and reading newspapers and keep up with the world through non-traditional media instead. But online news is every bit as misleading and inaccurate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,6],"tags":[2013,2011,2016,2015,2012,2014],"class_list":["post-17889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-a-series-of-tubes","tag-fiction-as-news","tag-gawker","tag-libel","tag-lying","tag-misleading-headline","tag-misquoting-sources"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17889"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17898,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17889\/revisions\/17898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}