On October 10, 2022, Auron MacIntyre famously tweeted, “You don’t hate journalists enough. You think you do, but you don’t.” And MacIntyre wasn’t the first person to express this sentiment, either.
Earlier in August of that same year Carl Witmer may have been the very first one to declare, “No matter how much you hate the media it’s not enough.” Naturally, many others have followed suit and more or less said the same thing.
If you want to know why I hate the media as much as these other people, check out the headline of this story from ESPN, of all places: “Vice President Vance Fumbles Buckeyes’ Championship Trophy.”
Okay, so the anonymous author from Associated Press earns a single point for the use of proper grammar, and that is awarded begrudgingly. That same author loses all the other points by writing the rest of the story that goes with the article. Follow this hyperlink to read the story at ESPN, but first watch the accompanying video to see how exactly the Vice President “fumbled” the trophy–it literally fell apart when he tried to pick it up because the trophy wasn’t attached to its base.
The word “fumble” typically conveys a sense of carelessness or recklessness. In football, a fumble is almost always a bad thing. A fumble is a blunder, and in football it means a failure to maintain possession of the ball. It most often describes a mistake by the ball carrier. Even a forced fumble is still a turnover. You can’t sugarcoat it–a fumble is an error, a mistake.
Furthermore, as you watch the video, please notice that Ohio State running back TreVeyon Henderson was trying to hold the trophy itself while Vance was picking up the trophy base and may have actually caused the two pieces to separate. It seems rather clear that no one told Vice President the trophy and base were two separate pieces and no one suggested he shouldn’t pick them up.
Yet the AP article begins, “Vice President JD Vance ended the Ohio State football team’s visit to the White House on Monday by fumbling the team’s national championship trophy.”
Okay, what’s wrong with that lede? Practically everything.
First, the team’s ceremonial visit didn’t end at the moment the trophy came apart. Nobody said, “Jeez! He broke our trophy!”, packed up and left in a huff. Second, Vance never fumbled anything. The trophy literally fell apart in his hands.
Ask yourself this question: why did this article need to be written in the first place? What purpose does it serve? Vance didn’t drop the trophy. He didn’t do anything wrong. He didn’t break anything. It’s a non story. Except with clever headlines and by torturing language to make a nonexistent point, it can make a certain politician look bad. I don’t care if you love Vance or hate him, don’t make up crap and lie about him. Especially not when we’ve got video and can see what really happened for ourselves.
Ask yourself one more question: would we have seen the same story written about Joe Biden or Kamala Harris? Not a chance. We knew Hunter’s laptop was real. We knew Sleepy Joe forced Ukraine to fire the prosecutor investigating Hunter’s corruption by threatening to withhold aid. But no journalist cared enough about those stories to write them. Instead, we get stories falsely claiming Vance dropped a football trophy.
Never forget: no matter how much you think you hate the media, it’s just not enough. It can never be enough. The Associated Press truly sucks. That’s all.
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