‘Gross:’ Critics slam New York Times misstep in MSU shootings coverage
This strange stretch Tuesday by The New York Times angers some Michigan State students and alumni. “Take this down and show some respect,” one critic tweets about linking deadly campus shootings to Larry Nassar’s unrelated abuses.
Breaking news coverage is hard, yes. Journalists scramble to share developments accurately, separate facts from speculation and give relevant context. Dozens of Michigan reporters and editors post adroitly Monday night and Tuesday about gunfire that killed three students and critically wounded five.
But from afar, The Times stumbled as its live news desk hustled to compile blog-style bulletins and short items from televised briefings, phone reporting, freelancer Sophia Lada (a 2022 MSU journalism graduate) and other sources. In a misguided effort to beef up the presentation, the paper includes the irrelevant recap of a past scandal at the same campus.
Nine paragraphs of that 11-paragraph item have a detailed review of 2016–22 events and fallout from molestations that brought Nassar a life sentence, in effect, on seven counts of criminal sexual conduct and federal child pornography charges. The Times’ contorted connection is that Anthony McRae’s deadly rampage Monday night “put the school back in the national spotlight.” The ill-conceived post, which starts with a sentence about the shootings and ends with a statement from MSU’s interim president, devotes 425 of its 505 words to Nassar’s crimes.
It’s by a staff reporter who also wrote a six-paragraph item on MSU’s 1855 roots as one of the country’s first land grant universities. That’s called filler in the trade, though both items remain online.
Social media pushback against the Nassar tie-in is fast and furious.
Anna Heaton, a Lansing public relations executive who was Rick Snyder’s press secretary from 2016–18 while he was governor, calls it “gross” and asks The Times in a tweet: “What is the point of publishing this?” One of her followers, former Flint Journal columnist Andrew Heller, replies: “Such a cold and journalistically weird story.”
‘Add insult to injury’
“That is insane,” a MSU graduate tweets separately from Houston, starting a long thread that’s shared nearly 200 times in the first four hours.
“What a terrible article,” says one critic there. Others use the words “disgusting,” “horrible,” “insensitive” and “pathetic.” adds another. At Reddit, a similar thread exceeds 200 comments and 1,000 upvotes.
Here’s a sampling of many dozens of Twitter reactions:
- “Felt it was a good time to add insult to injury, @nytimes?”
- “No one at the @nytimes thought it was in poor taste to write this on the same day kids were murdered? Unreal.”
- “Dragging out my parents’, sister’s and hundreds of other families’ trauma, all for clicks. Why on earth is it okay to drag this man back out because of the shooting?? Let Nassar rot in prison and be forgotten once and for all.”
- “Unless the shooter was acting on Nassar's behalf, what in the blue hell does this have to do with the shooting?! Trash reporting. I try to defend the NYT. But articles like this make it impossible.”
- “It’s crazy that they compare this. Last night was someone attacking us. they’re acting like somehow it had something to do with our culture.”
- “Take this down and show some respect. Kids are dead and you’re linking the random act by trying to correlate to a deliberate molestation scandal. One has nothing to do with the other.”
- “The @nytimes has completely lost all perspective and context.”
- “Shoehorning tragedies up against each other is total fucking dogshit.”
Bad judgment, indeed, as the paper’s public editor surely would agree if that position hadn’t been eliminated in 2017.
