tyrannical bastard 3442 Posted October 15, 2020 Share Posted October 15, 2020 Scary times at WKRG in Mobile, as "God" smashed "her" way into the station's lobby. https://www.wkrg.com/mobile-county/mobile-police-arrest-a-person-who-smashed-the-front-door-at-wkrg/ This comes over two years after someone fired shots at the building. https://www.wkrg.com/mobile-county/police-investigate-shots-fired-at-wkrg-building/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Samantha 2876 Posted October 15, 2020 Share Posted October 15, 2020 What a peculiar news story that is... The WKRG article assiduously avoids any personal pronouns. The name cited police. The outfit. That woman is trans and she is being brutally misgendered in half the media on this incident. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrschimpf 2050 Posted October 15, 2020 Share Posted October 15, 2020 25 minutes ago, Samantha said: The WKRG article assiduously avoids any personal pronouns. The name cited police. The outfit. That woman is trans and she is being brutally misgendered in half the media on this incident. There just seems to be no justification to show the video, nor name the involved, except that it was on camera. This could have easily been a story where the anchor just said someone broke in the door, police were involved, and that they hope they seek proper mental health services (why thank the police and not mention mental health outside of it derisively?). It also behooves Nexstar/iHeart at this point to re-design that bizarre split entrance if this is now a regular occurrence; why isn't there an entrance foyer with a second door, or reinforcement with that door rather than just this two-door pair? Some kind of security besides a higher-quality Nest cam? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Samantha 2876 Posted October 15, 2020 Share Posted October 15, 2020 2 minutes ago, tyrannical bastard said: Actually the way it is set up, the iHeart portion is separated through a glass hallway to the stairs and elevator and the other door (that was not broken into) only goes into this. They occupy the 2nd and 3rd floors of the building, while WKRG is on the ground floor. This setup goes all the way back to post 9/11 to reinforce security between the recently separated entities. Access to the station itself is through another secured door at the other end of the lobby. Originally, they were all a part of WKRG-AM-FM-TV under family ownership. When WKRG was broken up, the radio stations were sold off and eventually became a part of Clear Channel, while Spartan got the TV station. Here is WPMI's account of the story. They are radio partners with iHeart (and were once co-owned during the Clear Channel days yet remained in the WKRG building) It sounds like iHeart was the intended target. https://mynbc15.com/news/local/man-claiming-to-be-god-smashes-his-way-into-mobile-media-complex-lobby WPMI dodges the football here by not mentioning WKRG. There seems to be some bad blood over a very well-known weather guy who came from here to work there now. As for the gender of the assailant, they did show his legal name including her assumed name. Whether it was trying to distance themselves from the issue, or just the fact of his/her status, it's a coverage issue that needs standards going forward. Seeing the assailant may have led the viewer to assume their sex, even if it was for perceived shock value. I sent an email to WKRG. The way media outlets handled it was outright disgusting. It's worse than what I saw with Brandon here in 2018, tbh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TVNewsLover 727 Posted October 15, 2020 Share Posted October 15, 2020 1 hour ago, Samantha said: What a peculiar news story that is... The WKRG article assiduously avoids any personal pronouns. The name cited police. The outfit. That woman is trans and she is being brutally misgendered in half the media on this incident. 21 minutes ago, Samantha said: I sent an email to WKRG. The way media outlets handled it was outright disgusting. It's worse than what I saw with Brandon here in 2018, tbh. I’m not sure why you think she was misgendered. At no point did the WKRG story refer to this person using a male pronoun. The original website article stayed gender neutral (update made reference to the person being transgendered), and the TV piece that aired identified the person as a she. What part of that handling is disgusting? And correct me if I’m wrong, but is there a journalistic standard in place for referring to transgender people? One might argue that certain stations/newspapers are referring to the person by their legal gender. Let me state that I’m all for people being referred to as what they identify as, I just think it gets a little tricky when it comes to the news media. 42 minutes ago, mrschimpf said: There just seems to be no justification to show the video, nor name the involved, except that it was on camera. This could have easily been a story where the anchor just said someone broke in the door, police were involved, and that they hope they seek proper mental health services (why thank the police and not mention mental health outside of it derisively?). I’m not sure I understand where you’re going with the mental health reference here. What’s the issue? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rusty Muck 4159 Posted October 15, 2020 Share Posted October 15, 2020 There are several people I know their respective deadnames towards, but I would never say them. But that’s out of simple courtesy and respect to them, it’s the bare minimum of effort one can take. (And ngl, I kinda cringe seeing genders in quotation marks, it might not be intentional, but that just feels really off to me. No direct offense towards anyone, please understand!) If this conflicting issue of identifying-vs.-actual legal status hasn’t been addressed yet in the AP Stylebook, it probably should behoove them to consider as such, regardless of the pushback that would undoubtedly follow. It’s folly to assume that such a discussion—no matter how much the discomfort towards some—is avoidable. Especially if you’re dealing with stories that might be picked up on a national/global wire service. This is an issue where there was a failure to double-check the identity by only going through one source, in this case, the police. The sooner we confront this issue and address it properly, the better off we’ll all be in the long run. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyrannical bastard 3442 Posted October 15, 2020 Author Share Posted October 15, 2020 FTVLive covered the story today, and identified her as female. https://www.ftvlive.com/sqsp-test/2020/10/15/cops-bust-woman-that-smashed-her-way-into-nexstar-station I hate to think that the way the local media covered this story was to "tone it down" for the locals. This part of the country is blood red, and I'm not just talking the Crimson Tide. The hate that breeds down here is unfathomable. It seems that WKRG stirs the pot more than even their Sinclair competition. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Samantha 2876 Posted October 15, 2020 Share Posted October 15, 2020 Locking this thread because there isn't much more to say, in all honesty. I wrote an email to WKRG about their coverage, and I received a nice, if short, thank you from Debbie Williams. Gonna quote something I said: Quote Cisgender men named Bruce don't normally go by Brandi or wear wigs or dresses. And WKRG's own story did better than Lagniappe Weekly, which ran the headline "Mobile man arrested for burglary after incident at television station". I wish I could say the same about Amber Grigley, who tweeted, "A man dressed as a woman used a tire iron to smash through our front doors. He goes by the name Brandy Jones, but was identified as Bruce Jones." Or Jessica Taloney, whose Facebook post read, "Bruce, who was wearing a dress and blue wig when he used a tire iron to smash through the front doors, also goes by the name Brandy Jones or Brandi Jones." That post invited a string of transphobic posts and commenters who used he/him...and it came four hours after she described "a woman smashing through the glass doors of the WKRG lobby with a tire iron". When trans people like us come out, we ask that our chosen names be used. Not the ones assigned to us—what we call our "deadnames". You don't ask a trans person their deadname. You just don't use it. Brandi needs mental help. Not deadnaming and laughing at by the media. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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