Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

Happy to say that my daughter got her first shot today, (Springfield Mass hospital). (pic from the early days of the pandemic)

 

I attended a wedding as those described.

(I think you are correct, however.)

 

But the readers do not know that.

 

No, we don't know. But consider the accusation embedded in the story. (Which I imagine could be true.) Then consider the interaction in the last graph.

Again - I wouldn't run it. Doesn't mean it didn't happen. But if it were fiction an editor would look at the last graph and say "that's a little on the nose."

It's poetic truth. It happened, trust us, just as the photog says, because that's the world we live in.

But, hey, it's just a journalism board we're on here. I'm sure I'm out of my mind for even considering the other side.

 

What other side are you looking for here? Someone who is excited to put themselves in the middle of large crowds with no masks in the middle of a pandemic? These are people's experiences. In a story about soldiers who stormed the beaches on D-Day would you demand to include people who wasn't there who doesn't think it was that big of a deal?

I wonder what nurses think of this story...

 

I'd like to hear from the bridesmaid who apparently didn't skip a beat when confronted with the death of the photographer's children. That's what I meant by the "other side."

 

Like you I'm leery of those "too on the nose" quotes, but this anonymous bridesmaid wasn't "confronted with the death of the photographer's children."

 

I wouldn't run it as written because I wouldn't run it as written - not because it wasn't fact-checked, although I somehow doubt Texas Monthly tracked down the wedding party and corroborated it. If nobody wants to put their name to it and call out this hideous group of people, who may have killed people with their super-spreader wedding, a month after the fact, I'm not sure what the point of running it is, except for the purpose of poetic, sign-o-the-times truth. Which, generally speaking, I think news outlets are unwise to engage in.

The middle material - I don't see why it's necessary to mask their identities, but it's slightly less...whatever. The framing anecdote is a perfect storm.

 

You're right. It's the hypothetical death of the photographer's children. My mistake.

FWIW, the story hit its mark. I'm sure it got millions of hits. Precisely for the framing device.

 

Even if true, the anecdote is less “hideous” than it is being spun. The bridesmaid likely thought the photographer was being a bit of a “drama queen,” when one considers the low death rate of children from COVID 19.