Are 25 Protestors a Story?
By Chuck Warren and Sam Stone
The problem with most newspapers today is they have an agenda. Yes, we realize that is the "duh" comment of the day.
The problem is that both sides of an argument do not get equal treatment. Facts are omitted. Vocal protest by a small cadre of people if it fits the ideological narrative of the newspaper and its editors, gets coverage.
Case in point is today's Arizona Republic SUBSCRIBERS ONLY article.
'We're not giving up': Students at Hamilton High in Chandler walk out for LGBTQ+ rights
The primary photo is a side shot of a female student that omits the lack of students "participating in the walkout for Day of Silence, an annual event organized by the national nonprofit GLSEN."
Here is the reality -- the number of people attending in proportion of the school population doesn’t merit a story by the Arizona Republic. Not sure it merits coverage by the high school newspaper.
As reported, the event organizer "... was one of about 25 students at Hamilton High School in Chandler," Arizona. So a reporter playing semantics, cannot even specify it was 25 protestors. Heck how do we know it wasn't 21? 22? Maybe it's Common Core math.
Let us be generous and give them twenty-five protestors. Do you know how many students attend Hamilton High School? 4,116
What percentage of 25 of 4,116? According to my iPhone calculator it is 0.006.
I don't care what side of an issue you are on, those numbers don't merit a feature story for a major, daily newspaper. Some journalistic standards would recommend that twenty-five protestors out of a school of 4,116 students DOES NOT deserve coverage. Whether the issue is LGBTQ+, pro-life or pro-choice protest, pro-Second Amendment or Anti-Second Amendment debate etc. These low numbers never justify a newspaper to imply that the public reaction is bigger then reality. Maybe this is one of the curses of social media. Clickbait pays the bills.
Should the LBGTQ+ students be free to protest? Absolutely.
Maybe it would make sense if the paper wanted to give them the opportunity to write an op-ed.
Instead potential readers get treated to a deceptive headline and image manipulation, and an article that implies greater support than reality.
The Arizona Republic knows that studies suggest that 80% of readers never make it past a headline, and traffic can vary by as much as 500% based on the headline. Not surprising, this means you need to grab people's attention while you have it by a carefully designed, sensational headline. They got that covered.
What they didn't have is a story.
The Arizona Republic, like most other daily newspapers, knows what they are doing. They are pushing an agenda. They know the stats. They know you will give this a couple second glance, if at all, and say "wow students are really fired up about this." Folks, they are not.