Photo Fox News [retrieved 11-Nov-2021]
Rather than doing journalism, where you’re responsible for the veracity of your story, it’s easier to push a narrative if you just quote what ‘some people say’, then don’t investigate whether what’s said is true or not.
In its benign form, ‘Some would say’ is used by a reporter in order to appear not to be taking sides.
In its toxic form, the media uses it to get extremely biased or crackpot ideas into an interview, to either get the interview subject to support the idea or defend against it, depending on the narrative the reporter is looking to advance. This way, the claim is fully promoted without any scrutiny.
The seriousness of the claim is what’s important here, not its truthfulness. Kind of like the Trump-Russia Collusion hoax.
There’s really nothing nationally newsworthy about someone who’s not satisfied with their school pictures, unless! – you can generate some kind of controversy around it.
This story doesn’t promote a political point of view, which is unusual, since most do. So I would just regard it as sloppy journalism. But it still is illustrative of the technique.
It seems there’s a mother who was ‘outraged’ that her son’s hearing aids were minimized in a school photo.1 On November 6, 2021, Fox considered this story important enough to be second from the top of their web home page.
The headline says the hearing aids were ‘edited out’, but nowhere in the story itself is that claim made.
The article spends a lot of time on the seven ways the retouching could have been done, and how hurtful it was to do it. What’s initially left out is whether or not the photos were actually retouched! But then, if you read far enough, you get the photo studio’s take on the matter.
The studio said they didn’t retouch anything, that retouching has to be requested, and has to be paid for, and none of that happened. They stated that proof photos are sent to the parents at low resolution to discourage unauthorized copying. The low resolution colors for the child’s hearing aids and his skin are close enough that it’s not as easy to distinguish between the two as it would be in a full color photo.
The author does not attempt any independent analysis of the photos to prove or disprove the claim.
The headline should have been ‘Utah mom doesn’t like school photos’. But that wouldn’t generate as many clicks, would it? Encouraging fake outrage is wrong, no matter who does it.