In online news, there's "clickbait," a sensational headline which doesn't reflect the underlying story. The New York Daily News took that concept into the front page of its Tuesday print edition. Its headline — "DADDY'S LITTLE GHOUL" — included a photo of Ivanka Trump. The underlying article mentioned her only once in passing. We should call this "printbait."
Here's that "printbait" cover, which has led to richly deserved disdain:
The paper's related clickbait tweet reads: "Deplorable: An early look at Tuesday's front ..."
That adjective perfectly describes the front page.
The write-up by two Daily News reporters mentioned Ivanka once, and only as Jared Kushner's spouse:
There is no journalistic justification for the Ivanka-themed front page.
The Daily News pair used forms of the word "protest" three times in their write-up and twice in a single photo caption to describe Palestinians attempting to break into Israel, actions they called "demonstrations."
An Tuesday Weekly Standard editorial had a far better suggestion:
In ordinary English usage, a protest is a collective action or gesture meant to bring pressure on a government or corporate entity. The Gaza “protests” are meant to bring pressure on Israel, but they’re intended mainly to kill and maim both Israelis and the Palestinian “protesters” themselves.
These demonstrations would be better described as suicide-riots. For nearly two months, Hamas and other militant factions have been encouraging young Palestinian men to storm the fence separating Gaza from Israel. The rioters cut holes in the fence, charge Israeli guards with crude weapons like axes, and lob fire bombs over the wall in attempts to set Israeli fields on fire. Hamas has pledged to massacre those on the other side of the fence, and these riots are expressions of that intention. Israeli defense forces are obliged to respond with force. An axe-clutching Palestinian insanely charging into Israeli territory isn’t a “protester” but a combatant and a terrorist. The fact that he doesn’t expect to prevail against the might of the Israel Defense Forces—he is in essence on a suicide mission—doesn’t somehow oblige Israeli soldiers not to use force to stop him. The Israelis have no choice but to fire back, and they do, often with deadly results.
This is Hamas’s longstanding strategy: The more Palestinian young men die, the more hellish the conditions of Palestinian neighborhoods, the more sympathy aroused in Western media. Hence Palestinian rioters’ destruction of the only cargo passage through which cooking fuel can get to Gaza’s 2 million residents. The act of vandalism appears senseless unless you understand Hamas’s aim is to make Palestinians destitute for the benefit of Western media.
Yesterday's U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv marked the follow-through on an action Congress expected to take place in 1999 after passing a related law in 1995. It also follows a unanimous June 2017 U.S. Senate resolution calling on President Trump to "abide" by that law. He has.
The Daily News clearly isn't happy about that. Hence the childish "printbait" front page.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
