08-25-2020, 07:42 PM
Apologies in advance for any mods that may have to move this off-topic discussion.
First of all, I'm quite disappointed anyone would interpret my comments as supporting or encouraging suppression of Louisa's opinions... I never said anything of the sort, and never will. She is free to self-publish whatever she pleases, and The Record/TorStar are free to publish whatever they like (including her writing), within the bounds of the law. I am a strong supporter of free speech, and even encourage providing a platform for controversial ideas whether or not I agree with them. Opposite of Dan, I think societies suppression of broad-stroke racist content has allowed race based pseudoscience to flourish (I don't agree with the entire book, but The Blank Slate frames this issue well).
Secondly, forgive me for being confused about how The Record categorizes its content. I've spent 20 minutes looking through it and I still can't figure it out, despite their claim that "The Record clearly labels content on all platforms to draw a clear line between news and opinion."
According to https://www.therecord.com/news-glossary.html, the category breakdown is
- News
-> Analysis
-> Investigation
- Opinion
-> Editorial
-> Opinion
-> Advice
-> Blog
And some others under opinion.
If I click on the Opinion section, I can see all these articles clearly labelled as Opinion or Editorial: https://i.imgur.com/JNXqQYY.png
If I click on one of those specific articles, I can see the Opinion section is still selected on the menu, and the articles clearly has an Opinion tag: https://i.imgur.com/0U9rXg2.png
If I click on Louisa's article from the Opinions section, I am then taken to the Local section (which doesn't preclude being an opinion, but is slightly misleading), but the article does not have any of the opinion tags on it: https://i.imgur.com/8z0TlH0.png
In fact, the URL for all of Louisa's recent articles are under therecord.com/news/ instead of therecord.com/opinion/ except for one, and that is her only recent article with the Opinion label on it.
Perhaps I'm still missing something, but it shouldn't be difficult to figure this out. Even if many of us are able to tell by reading the headlines, or analyzing the articles, most people will simply take these opinions as fact if it's not very, very clearly labelled. But all of this is an aside; I don't care if she is writing opinions or news articles, I was just stating that I don't trust her to be honest and thorough.
First of all, I'm quite disappointed anyone would interpret my comments as supporting or encouraging suppression of Louisa's opinions... I never said anything of the sort, and never will. She is free to self-publish whatever she pleases, and The Record/TorStar are free to publish whatever they like (including her writing), within the bounds of the law. I am a strong supporter of free speech, and even encourage providing a platform for controversial ideas whether or not I agree with them. Opposite of Dan, I think societies suppression of broad-stroke racist content has allowed race based pseudoscience to flourish (I don't agree with the entire book, but The Blank Slate frames this issue well).
Secondly, forgive me for being confused about how The Record categorizes its content. I've spent 20 minutes looking through it and I still can't figure it out, despite their claim that "The Record clearly labels content on all platforms to draw a clear line between news and opinion."
According to https://www.therecord.com/news-glossary.html, the category breakdown is
- News
-> Analysis
-> Investigation
- Opinion
-> Editorial
-> Opinion
-> Advice
-> Blog
And some others under opinion.
If I click on the Opinion section, I can see all these articles clearly labelled as Opinion or Editorial: https://i.imgur.com/JNXqQYY.png
If I click on one of those specific articles, I can see the Opinion section is still selected on the menu, and the articles clearly has an Opinion tag: https://i.imgur.com/0U9rXg2.png
If I click on Louisa's article from the Opinions section, I am then taken to the Local section (which doesn't preclude being an opinion, but is slightly misleading), but the article does not have any of the opinion tags on it: https://i.imgur.com/8z0TlH0.png
In fact, the URL for all of Louisa's recent articles are under therecord.com/news/ instead of therecord.com/opinion/ except for one, and that is her only recent article with the Opinion label on it.
Perhaps I'm still missing something, but it shouldn't be difficult to figure this out. Even if many of us are able to tell by reading the headlines, or analyzing the articles, most people will simply take these opinions as fact if it's not very, very clearly labelled. But all of this is an aside; I don't care if she is writing opinions or news articles, I was just stating that I don't trust her to be honest and thorough.