Appallingly slanted reporting from the Guardian -- DC plane crash

[GeneralPeter]

This article describes Trump's theory that DEI had something to do with the crash using debunking words throughout. 'Baselessly', 'without providing evidence' etc etc.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/30/trump-washington-dc-plane-crash-dei

The thing is, this isn't 'baseless'.

The FAA has said that the tower was understaffed. We don't know if that was relevant or has not. We do know that FAA recruitment cratered because of a (very well-evidenced) extremely crude attempt at DEI. There is a long-running class action lawsuit that is on public record and not made up. The test really did award points for saying you had more Ds than Cs at school, for saying science was your weakest subject, etc etc and they did then give the answers to candidates of a particular race before the test.

Sometimes things that sound like loonish right-wing conspiracy theories actually turn out to be true. If you think I must be a right-wing loon, please read this thread first (and many others out there -- this is all public record in court documents and not denied by the FAA).

x.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1752091831095939471

You would not know any of this if you read the Guardian article. Their reporter must surely know this stuff. So it's another attempt to bury with slurs an ideologically inconvenient actual truth. We've seen this before with sex-based rights, and the Guardian should stop it.

(Obligatory: I'm not a Trump fan, think he is appalling in many respects, several of them disqualifying for the presidency. But while comment is free, facts should be sacred).

And for the avoidance of doubt, I am absolutely not anti trans or anti any other social group. I worked for a long time in a professional environment alongside people from many different cultures and different religions and with people of different sexual orientation to me, I would say around 50 percent at least of where I worked would fall into that category, all excellent professionals appointed on merit. I have supported Labour since university. I myself am from quite a diverse heritage. So please no posters telling me I am racist right winger who "supports a pos".

@squizquiz just to repeat, again, along with most other people since you can’t seem to get this. All of that is fine, it is something being discussed and I do not disagree it is being discussed. But at this stage there is no official link between that discussion and the crash that took place and it may be utterly irrelevant to what happened. Maybe it is linked, we won’t know until the investigators report.

To attempt to conflate the two things right now, especially for the President to conflate them, is irresponsible and cruel. It stokes hatred and it distracts people from the fact that the President has literally sacked hundreds of air safety people just one week before the crash.

By getting bogged down in this you are basically allowing Trump to distract you from what you don’t want to see.

If you discard facts then maybe Trump makes a lot of sense

Just like emailing air traffic controllers just 24 hours after the crash urging them to quit their jobs and take mass “buyouts”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-admin-emails-air-traffic-controllers-quit-your-jobs/

I tell you what, @marmaladeandpeanutbutter: if you can find a single nice thing I've said about Trump in this entire thread I'll make a £1000 donation to any UK-registered charity of your choice. Paid within one week.

It would be a lovely outcome to this thread.

Any positive adjective will do. We can ask MNHQ if they would mind adjudicating if there's any disagreement on what counts.

The Guardian article used 'baseless' in the title and said:
"Trump turned what might have been a sombre a press conference into a baseless rant against DEI, despite no evidence of a link with the crash"

That is indisputably true and merits the baseless title.

In this thread OP appears to be saying that the Guardian is disputing the existence of the court case - it is not - simply saying there is no evidence of a link between dei policies and the crash.

OP started the thread accusing the Guardian of 'appallingly slanted' reporting and has gone on to accuse the paper of:
Journalistic malpractice
Deliberately obfuscating
Incredibly one-sided
Distorting their reporting
Traducing and misreporting
Skew the news
One-sidedly to support a political agenda

In the context of this article this is clearly an appallingly unmerited attack.

I suspect the Guardian would be biased towards diversity policies - wouldn't anyone with any humanity?

Amusingly the FAA diversity policy in question was introduced in 2019 - guess who was president the?

Why are you so excited? Shush FFS.

@FrankieStein403

Frankie:

OP appears to be saying that the Guardian is disputing the existence of the court case - it is not - simply saying there is no evidence of a link between dei policies and the crash.

The Guardian:

JD Vance […] said without offering evidence that* *hundreds had sued the US government because “they would like to be air traffic controllers, but they were turned away because of the color of their skin”.

The case:

In Brigida vs Buttigieg, the named plaintiffs are Andrew Brigida and Matthew Douglas-Cook, representing a class of approximately 1,000 individuals alleging racial discrimination in FAA hiring practices.

Me again:

I think the Guardian is doing something worse than 'disputing' the existence of the case in that sentence actually. They are using weaselly framing to suggest the claim is false or unfounded, without actually saying so, when the claim is 100% provably true (the existence of the case, the number of plaintiffs, and its core contention all just basic simple facts), easily checkable, and goes to the heart of the reader's understanding of the claim they are purporting to debunk.

The reader can come to any conclusion they like (I'm absolutely no fan of Trump) but if you are a newspaper, your job is to inform in a basically even-handed manner, offer relevant context for the reader, and not deliberately obfuscate.

(The actions highlighted by the lawsuit were implemented in 2014. Did you read the commentary? It gives plenty of useful context, with links to the court docs).

Sources:
The Guardian -- www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/30/trump-washington-dc-plane-crash-dei
The case -- casetext.com/case/brigida-v-buttigieg-1
The commentary -- www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-a-quick-overview

Tsk - your initial complaint was re 'baseless' - where you are provably wrong. There is no basis in fact linking dei to the crash. Headline is fine.

You now say the Guardian reported that vance had said... 'without offering evidence' - are you saying that he did offer evidence? Surely that would have meant him pointing to the pending court case? (which could of course end up finding no fault - however unlikely)

So that is the basis of your attacks on the Guardian in this thread?

I just can't see that article deserves the level of hyperbole you have used unless you want the Guardian to be against dei initiatives.

Amusingly the FAA diversity policy in question was introduced in 2019 - guess who was president the?

This timeline is wrong because the biographical test was used from 2014.

However I agree Trump overlooked much wrt DEI so I’m glad he’s fixing that this time around

You've read all my posts, and presumably the explainer, and perhaps the court papers, so I'm not sure what more I can add.

You will already know that:
i) you and I disagree on the meaning of 'baseless' (see my Heathrow example).
ii) no basis in fact linking DEI: my view is we don't know. There are pretty well-documented grounds to think a specific badly-executed programme exacerbated FAA staff shortages, and we know that the tower was understaffed. But equally, you know I've stressed throughout that there may be no link at all to the crash.
iii) you know my objection to "without offering evidence". I've explained it several times, including in the post you've just replied to.
iv) assuming you are of normal reading ability, you know the basis of my criticism of the Guardian (you're probably one of the few who read the whole lot!)
v) if you disagree, or think it's not a big issue, that's fine too.
vi) my personal views on DEI? Not really the main thrust of the thread, but I think there are some very valuable aspects and ways of doing DEI and some very harmful ones. I tend to like liberal-rooted ones, and dislike CSJ-rooted ones.
vii) but mainly, I want good quality news reporting without an agenda.

If Trump’s ‘common sense’ approach is true, why is anyone flying in, over and to the US, given his claims about the standards of ATC?

Damaging, surely?

Something can be degraded without it being so dangerous you need to stop all flying. This was the deadliest crash in about 15 years, and commercial flying is still very safe by comparison with other modes of transport. Plus, stopping flying puts people onto the roads instead, which increases fatalities.

That said, there have been long-expressed worries about how crowded some bits of US airspace are, and how overstretched the controllers are. I think the best argument (which, of course, may not be what motivates Trump) is that things can and should be significantly improved well before the point that flying becomes so dangerous that it must all stop.

Because we have business or family ties to the US and have to go, and understand it is (slightly) riskier nowadays.

We accept far more risk on highways after all. But we should try to minimize unnecessary death while balancing economic and social needs

FBI Academy

This is a bit of a tangent but I was wondering something. Trump's press secretary made a comment about "do we pray we land safely or do we pray what skin colour the pilot has'.

I read that as a blatantly racist comment - any pilot who is not white is probably a DEI hire and therefore (by their logic) no good.

But it could also be read as: nobody cares what skin colour the pilot has, so DEI isn't needed.

Which interpretation is more likely?

I honestly read that as ‘nobody thinks about it, we just want the plane landing safely’

The other interpretation seems a bit of a reach in all honesty

Yes you're probably right. It was just after all this speculation on Twitter that the ATC or pilot was a diversity hire (and by implication not up to the job).

I still have yet to see need report saying that the ATC or air crew involved had disabilities and were hired as a result of DEI. So difficult to say if Trump's rant had any basis in reality or not.

A bit of a reach..

From the same people who said Haitians were eating cats

I think this BBC background article strikes a good balance: makes it clear that Trump's comments are probably bullshit (and certainly ill-timed) without giving the impression that he'd just randomly pulled this stuff out of thin air because he's mad.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyeg61pnl5o

We have discussed how DEI efforts hurt the pipeline for ATC.

Trump is hardly the first to broach the topic. It’s been discussed since the lawsuit mentioned earlier

He may have a point generally speaking then. I can see there could be good reasons to not want a pilot for example who is actively displaying psychosis. I seem to recall a tragic case a few years back of a pilot who was meant to be off sick with psychosis, and that ended in tragedy when he flew a plane into a mountain range. Very sad for all concerned.

I've been a psych patient with a fairly serious diagnosis myself before anyone assumes I'm being ableist.

Even if someone came though a DEi programme, they still have to go through and pass extensive training as the FAA have pointed out. All DEI does is get more diverse people to apply, they still have to be good enough to pass. So it has no impact on the quality, it just means not just white men get on the training due to unconscious bias.

Did you see the Substack post linked earlier? It has good background on this whole thing, which predated both Trump and Biden (but seriously harmed the hiring process which has had repercussions today)