Columnist Coulter in hot water over voting
Stuff like this annoys me. It’s what gives ammunition to folks that say the media is left-leaning. Not the article itself, which is valid, but randomly, at the bottom of the article, is this sentence:
The right-wing commentator also authored a book that said some September 11 widows were “enjoying their husbands’ deaths.”
Why on earth is this in the article? It’s as if to say “And here’s another reason you shouldn’t like Ann Coulter.”
It does seem kind of petty.
When a public figure is in the news for any reason, the stories about her will usually make mention of what she’s best-known for or why she was last in the news. Go look up any story about anybody and you’ll see I’m right.
The last time Coulter was in the headlines was when she wrote that book and dissed those widows.
As a former reporter, I’m backing you up. No matter how obvious or famous the person is (unless we’re talking about President of the US or Tom Cruise famous) you always have to stop at the end of your story for those people going, “Anne Coulter? Why do I know that name? Who is she?” And you usually do just grab back to the last time the name was big in the news for the, “Oh HER” effect. With AC, it’s hard to come up with a time when she wasn’t being a psycho nightmare.
That said, the reporting and writing on this story is absolutely terrible and the transition totally clunky.
Better evidence of bias would have been if the detail about the widow-bashing had been in the lead.
hed: Widow-Bashing Fascist Psycho Under Investigation for Vote Fraud
Well, sure, I realize that. But they still had the choice of the former (well known for) or the latter (last in the news). But I still think a neutral choice would be to mention she is a conservative pundit/author or whatever.