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OPINION
Mar. 01, 2021 | The Mercury
LETTER TO THE EDITOR: The Mercury should do better ALESANDRA BELL | OUTREACH EDITOR
Editing with (more) care
“Stability through civility” was poorly fact-checked, edited. DANIEL VALDEZ COURTESY
Op-eds can be dicey, to say the least. Remember last summer when The New York Times published an incendiary editorial by Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton advocating military intervention to curb BLM protests? The decision to print that authoritarian garbage was so ill-advised that the newspaper’s opinion editor resigned and the outlet’s op-ed process was overhauled. The opinion piece “Stability Through Civility,” posted on The Mercury’s website on Feb. 1, is not nearly as significant of a public danger as Cotton’s article. But the fact that it passed through The Mercury’s editorial board with little to no quality edits makes it a more disheartening read than anything The Gray Lady has published this century. Jimmy Teeling’s op-ed levels most of the blame for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot on Democrats and riots during BLM protests for making “political violence acceptable in America.” That contrarian viewpoint requires air-tight logic and relevant sources to back it up, but the structure of the piece does not directly relate to his argument or refute his claims when they are demonstrably false. For example, Teeling repeatedly minimizes the number of Capitol rioters (“a few Trump supporters,” “a small fraction”): a convenient obfuscation of the fact that over 200 people have been arrested on charges associated with the riot. Teeling also claims that Democratic politicians encouraged violence by BLM, citing a USA Today article about Rep. Ayanna Pressley. The link quotes Pressley’s August 2020 statement on MSNBC that “there will be unrest in the streets for as long as there is unrest in our lives.” Using
that quote as proof that Democratic politicians encouraged political violence is a stretch that would make Mr. Fantastic wince. Teeling also attempts to prove this claim by linking a Washington Post article about Kamala Harris promoting the Minnesota Freedom Fund bail fund. However, that article ultimately asserts that MFF funds did not lead to the release of “violent rioters” who then committed further crimes, contradicting Teeling’s claim. These are rhetorical inconsistencies and dishonest reaches that should have been caught by The Mercury’s editorial board, including its opinion editor, managing editor, copy editor and editor-in-chief. The lack of apparent care extends to the article’s formatting, which leaves “Republican” and “Democrat” in lowercase several times like a Billie Eilish song title. Teeling might as well have copied and pasted his rough draft directly onto The Mercury’s website. I do not blame The Mercury as an institution, as former Mercury editor-in-chief Cindy Folefack tweeted: “95% of The Mercury’s staff had nothing to do with this and no say in its publication.” She urged those frustrated with the decision to “take it to Merc leadership,” which is why I focus my criticism primarily on the newspaper’s editorial board. By granting its platform to such sloppy rhetoric without exercising due editorial diligence, The Mercury’s editorial board has damaged the credibility of its organization and UTD Student Media overall. So where do we go from here? This journalistic and ethical mistake highlights two major responsibilities for both readers and journalists in general. As readers, we must stay critical of any media
SEE EDITING, PAGE 16
CINDY FOLEFACK, BHARHAV ARIMILLI, MIRIAM PERCIVAL COURTESY
The Mercury has begun descending into a den of right-wing misinformation. As former editors-in-chief, it is heartbreaking to watch the paper that we worked to make a legitimate outlet become weaponized in this way. Jimmy Teeling’s Feb. 1 op-ed, “Stability through civility,” is emblematic of The Mercury’s recent habit of publishing opinion pieces that are demonstrably false at best and bigoted at worst. One often-repeated – but misused – rule of journalism is to always tell both sides of a story. There are not, in fact, two sides to every story. Racism is wrong. The truth is the truth. Facts are not political. These aren’t up for debate. There was a litany of problems in Teeling’s op-ed, from claiming that only a “few” Trump supporters stormed the Capitol when in fact hundreds were caught on camera doing so, to suggesting that supporters’ suspicion of voter fraud fueled the attack, despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud. The author then quotes Martin Luther King, Jr. to justify the violence at the Capitol. How would King feel about his words being used to defend domestic terrorists and white supremacists? Teeling also attempts to draw a false equivalency between the Capitol riot and the violence at the Black Lives Matter protests last summer, failing to note that the latter occurred in response to repeated episodes of police brutality, extrajudicial killings and systemic racism. Teeling’s use of legitimate news articles to support his revisionist claims was particularly problematic. He cites a USA Today article to claim Democratic politicians “encouraged the violent actions” from Black Lives Matter and Antifa protestors. The article he linked
made no mention of Antifa, and the only violence discussed in the article referenced threats Rep. Ayanna Pressley received from white supremacists. Additionally, the other article used to support his point of Democrats encouraging violence shows a tweet from Vice President Kamala Harris with a link to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, hardly a call to arms. Teeling also ignores the fact that several Capitol rioters have since come forward stating that they were following Trump’s orders. Did The Mercury’s editors read through the sources Teeling cited? If the current Mercury administration is unwilling to engage in basic fact-checking, it has no business publishing opinions. Teeling is free to rail against the “mainstream media” all he wants, but a cursory glance at the facts of the Jan. 6 attack make one thing clear: the only people responsible were the rioters, Trump and Republican lawmakers who stoked division by repeating false election fraud claims. As former editors-in-chief, we’ve dealt with opinion contributors who have relaxed relationships with truth. Let us be clear: having the opportunity to write an opinion is not an excuse to peddle conspiracy theories. An opinion requires basis in fact. What we’ve seen from the current administration of The Mercury is a failure to hold opinion writers accountable to this very simple standard. Cindy Folefack Editor-in-Chief, 2019-2020 Bhargav Arimilli Editor-in-Chief, 2018-2019 Miriam Percival Editor-in-Chief, 2017-2018
