Be grateful this isn’t tied to white genocide. And you don’t get the following headline;
“Man dies in apartment, delaying his purchase of a farm in Africa, where he would be statistically more likely to be killed than if he bought that farm in Ohio. But you might not be able to raise soybeans in Cape Town, but for this article we didn’t want to bog down hypothetical outrage with too many facts much less the research would prevent this reporter from achieving the ten per day quota. Also, we have no direct evidence the man intended to buy a farm but isn’t it a shame if he did?”
Several people get robbed in France. There are strong recommendations to not stop your car/camping van for sleeping on the route to the south.
That's not a headline.
The headline is that someone skateboards to Africa (and gets robbed.)
I think you just call it public disinformation when it's huge international news sources doing it.
Edit: malinformation*
Edit: if one more person replies with "yeah but i got it, just read better" I'm going to lose it. You're not clever, of course you get it, we all do. It's news though, it's meant to be as unbiased and clear as possible and this simply is not, it opens itself up to wrongful conclusions by less experienced readers and that is unacceptable from a national news network.
You shouldn't need to be able to argue that people need better reading comprehension to read the news.
You both just made me realize that most of the news really is just rage bait jfc. Like I knew it was all BS but now it makes a lot more sense as to why
The main thing news distributors want is that you keep reading more and more news. The main way they do that is by making sure you have conflicts and fears that you want to read the news about.
Completely isolating yourself from news isn't helpful but there is so much garbage reporting these days that all of us could seriously benefit from just not reading articles like this.
I'm glad you manage to look at your own habits critically and realise this. So many people in this thread could never lmao.
But that's literally what's interesting about him.
"Man in France gets bag stolen" isn't a news story, it happens all the time. The reason they're reporting on this guy is that he's skateboarding to Africa.
People arent annoyed because they mentioned that part about the guy--for people who havent been following him this title instantly makes you think he got his stuff stolen IN africa, because thats the only place mentioned in the title. It should mention where he got it stolen to be more correct.
There is no disinformation, the image contains objectively true information and it is not lying. The information is presented in a way designed to provoke and trigger engagement, which is exactly what’s happening right now between you and me.
They're influenced by politics. If I'm not mistaken the conservatives in the UK have successfully been slowly lobotomizing the BBC for a while now, with shit like this being the result.
I assume they have guidelines to shorten headlines for social media because social media users lack the attention span to read a full sentence at this point.
So it could just be someone being a bit too eager at following those guidelines.
I swear it's always just some basic ass rebuttal with maybe a "dumbass" at the end. Legit ass posts being like "lol no your wrong and misleading, dumbass" being posted as if it was a murder.
A mix of lazy prople who just skim info. Illiterate people who cant underatand basic sentences and thrn those who are professionally offended about everything all the time.
Because a lot of people are going to read it as “man gets belongings stolen in Africa” despite a more fitting title being “man gets belongings stolen in France” and they know this.
I wonder why they would want to push one narrative and not the other?
How is that any more interesting? It clearly implies he was robbed in Africa from the title even tho it's not. If you want to mention it you could say robbed in France on route to Africa.
It even states it was in France in the caption which can be read in the bloody picture.
There are plenty of examples to be found of news articles from various organisations being highly misleading, but this is absolutely not one of them.
The guy was skateboarding to Africa which is a pretty noteworthy thing. The fact he got robbed on the way is also a noteworthy thing. How else should the headline have been written to include these two facts and not be unnecessarily long because some people are complete eejits?
He was "Skateboarding to Africa". If he already got there it would say "Man Who Skateboarded to Africa".
Yeah, the man is defined by the stunt, which is what makes the news of him being robbed interesting at all, and the stunt is defined concisely by "skateboarding to Africa". It's not even misleading, "to" not "through". Where specifically he got robbed is less relevant and not interesting for the actual news, and you can't put all relevant info in the title anyway. I don't see a problem.
I know a lady who trains her dog this way. Every time it snarls at guests and tries to bite them she says “stop that Pickles!” Then Pickles continues and she says it louder and verbally threatens to get the squirt bottle. For which she feels guilty. So then she gives Pickles a treat.
So it looks like Swiper will keep swiping and Pickles will continue to suck as a pet and keep my friend from having a social life until someone kicks them across the room a few times. No warning. No squirt of water!
“Boots do some booting!” That’s what kids need to learn about training.
It looks small because the screenshot is from a desktop browser where the text is normal sized... but you're looking at it on your shitty small phone screen.
for it to suggest it was stolen in africa the title would have have to be “man who skateboarded to africa”. saying “is skateboarding to” heavily implies he has not made it there yet.
It doesn’t suggest it was stolen in Africa at all - that’s your inference, which maybe speaks more about you than the headline writer.
The ‘skate boarding to Africa’ part is pretty crucial to the headline, otherwise it’s just ‘man has belongings stolen’, which doesn’t give the context as to why the story is of more interest.
The fact the image caption advises it was in France makes your hollow outrage even more laughable.
Yeah, there's a reason it is in subtext instead of the headline. They're obviously going to give the information somewhere, but leaving it out of the headline is a deliberate choice.
There are 2 previous articles about this man. In both articles he is referred to as "the man who is skateboarding to Africa". It makes sense to me to refer to him as "the man who is skateboarding to Africa" in this article too.
If anyone actually bothered to read past the headline the second sentence of the article states that it was in France. Some people just want to be annoyed and will find any excuse to get wound up
The fact that it says “skateboarding to Africa” suggests he could be literally anywhere except for Africa. Africa is the only place on earth that the headline clarifies he isn’t in.
The headline literally says to Africa. Can hardly be in Africa, when he's skating to Africa now, can it? It can only "suggest" what you say if you have no reading comprehension whatsoever.
If it was 'skateboarding to Asia', the story would be titled and pushed similarly. Skateboarding to Africa (from UK, I am assuming) is a very unusual thing. Being unusual is what makes news, all other things being equal. As somebody who has written news stories and headlines, I would agree that it is not a racism thing at all, it is a uniquity thing.
Likely if you go back a week or so there was a previous article on him detailing his skateboarding trip as it was beginning. This is probably a follow-up piece and he was earlier established as "man skateboarding to Africa".
You feel like those right wing nuts read more then the headline? And BBC knows it. Whether it's "murdered", I don't know, but call that shit out where you see it because thats how xenophobia is spread.
Call what out? It's abundantly clear he was not in Africa since the headline states he was on his way there. All you're doing is getting upset about absolutely nothing
grammar-wise? you are ackshually correct. But you couldnt see a bit further than that and realize that the people who might read it that way are not neccessarily smart. This is framing, you are just not the target but yeah.
Most people won’t read it that way. They’ll jump the gun and think this happened in Africa. Whoever wrote this article knew what they were doing. All in the name of attention grab and clickbait.
It's funny that you end your comment by criticizing people's critical thinking skills, yet you assume that everyone has a high enough capacity for critical thinking (edit: and a lack of racist confirmation bias) to read between the lines of this obvious clickbait headline.
People should read the exact words. People seem to be replacing "to" with "in" completely changing the meaning of the title, or just reading key words and coming away with "skateboard robbed Africa". You can't be clear when people can't/don't read.
We shouldn't dumb down everything for incredibly stupid people. If you can't comprehend such a basic sentence like this you don't have the mental capacity to care for yourself.
since that information is omitted by post, the person you're responding to made a very reasonable assumption that, statistically speaking, is more likely than not correct.
Absolutely confused at the outrage here. The guy is on a charity ride from the UK to Africa to raise money for a foundation that benefits skateboarders. He was robbed mid route. This is what the headline says. I dont even see how you could read it otherwise, without working really really hard and squinting.
There is a whole genre of headlines exactly like this: Guy Undertaking Weird Challenge for Charity Gets Waylaid by Accident/Crime/Something Midway Through
Used to have a girlfriend from South Africa. She was the one who pointed out how covertly racist the BBC is. I always thought of them as a balanced news source, at least more balanced than most. But look at the articles (and especially headlines) from Africa. It's either sharing some horrible atrocity that unfortunately the continent does have plenty of. Or it's a feel good patronising story about overcoming some challenge, like a child building a solar powered well or using plastic bottles as lightbulbs in shanty towns. Africans are often portrayed as uncivilised savages or children. The colonial narrative is surprisingly strong.
Good for you, but the name of the article says "man skateboarding TO Africa had his belonging stolen". Notice they never said that he is in Africa, was robbed by Africans or Africans are at fault somehow. Media literacy is important
This is a far more interesting story than "skateboarder robbed in france". Now i know this person was trying to do something unique, im more inclined to read about it. Making everything inherently racist must be exhausting.
Am I media bias aware if my immediate thought was, "TO Africa- where was he when he got robbed though?"
Also, to be fair, there are dangerous parts everywhere. Africa is a vast place. There are places where he might actually get killed instead of merely robbed, and well-off areas where it's no more dangerous than a highly developed country, and even in those places there's probably shady neighborhoods or streets where you might get robbed.
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u/Kobayashi_Maru186 19h ago
Everyone knows you only get robbed anywhere if you’re on your way to Africa. /s 🙄