Continuing the pressure
The BBC also did a sloppy lazy story yesterday on how the Newport police abused a woman for putting stickers on lampposts. Some of the wording is identical to that of the trainee reporter for the South Wales Argus; I don’t know if one copied the other (or which came first) or they both drew from another source. Anyway it’s bad and insidious crap.
A 53-year-old woman has been arrested after stickers were placed around a city “directed towards the transgender community”.
A sloppy lazy unsupported claim right in the lede. Who says that’s how the stickers were “directed”? Why say that in the lede when in fact the stickers don’t mention “the transgender community”? Why tilt the story so heavily right at the beginning when there is zero evidence for what you’re claiming?
Also stop calling people you’re nannying a “community” while you don’t call people you’re throwing under the bus a “community.” What about the women’s community, eh? Why don’t we get the kid gloves “community” treatment? You could add the disabled “community” too while you’re at it.
The public has been advised not to remove posters in Newport after sharp objects had been found behind them.
That’s a claim, not a fact. The BBC should not be reporting it as a fact. The police should not be reporting it as a fact. The source of the claim seems to be one frothing trans “activist” in Cardiff who brags about his exploits on Twitter.
“This public safety message was intended to make the public aware of the dangers of potentially removing a poster, after glass and pins had been stuck behind the posters,” said Supt Vicki Townsend.
“We would reiterate that if anyone finds such a poster that they leave it to the relevant authority to remove it safely rather than risk injury.”
Is Townsend telling us that the police found glass and pins? Or does she mean this guy in Cardiff told them that he found glass and pins. I think it’s the latter.
Gwent Police said it was aware of a yellow sticker on social media which states “3+ women are killed by men each week” and “domestic violence kills”.
It said the 53-year-old woman from Newport was not arrested in relation to this sticker and its contents.
The force said it could not confirm the content of the stickers, as this falls into an active investigation, but said “the content of the stickers is directed towards the transgender community”.
I don’t believe them.
Reporting what the stickers actually say is good, though. For people not currently aware of the issues around transgender, I imagine them scratching their heads in puzzlement over what is harmful to the transgender “community”, and why this would have anything to do with the transgender “community”. I can imagine my parents shaking their heads in amazement that anyone would think this was targeted at transgender people; they would read it as being targeted against men who commit violence against women. They would be right.
Every person who finds this idiotic and isn’t already in the group that is skeptical of trans claims is another potential person who could “peak trans”.
Seems like they just ran a press release rather than actually looking into the matter. The press are always talking about how they have no budget for reporters any more, right?
Do they have even one editor trying to figure how how a piece of glass or a razor blade would fit between the wall or pole and the poster with no visible bulge, in a way that would not be apparent until anyone cuts themself removing the poster? I can’t figure it out, and not one of them asks the question as to whether it can possibly be true.
Oh, yeah, and we’re always hearing about how Auntie Beeb has been soooo transphobic.since they published that one article about lesbians being pestered by transbians.
Right? Hence the “lazy sloppy” insult. They could at least read the damn press release before regurgitating it.
The twitter user who exposed that person’s record for lies and bullshit has just been suspended. However, the thread has been preserved on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. (Images may take a while to load).
There are a number of signs around here next to certain street intersections–installed by the city, no less!–made in an octagonal shape, painted red, with a giant white “STOP” in the middle, which are clearly directed at me personally (or even worse, perhaps white men in general!), and obviously making some kind of combination of judgement and offensive order at me about how I should be leading my life, and it infuriates me. Moreover, they are heavy. Really quite heavy. I tried to pull one down and I wrenched my arm doing so, so clearly they are intended to injure me. I have reported the 50 or so such signs that I’ve found to my local police, and I expect that they will find and arrest the perpetrators of this heinous string of crimes.
Jennifer reports that her phone is now at Leeds. She tracked it. What the hell are they doing with it up there? Is there a special Anti-TERF forensics lab?