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).

Hiring people who aren’t mentally capable of being air traffic’s controllers would certainly be a ballsy move on the FAA’s part, wouldn’t?

It’s almost as if Trump is trying to do anything he can to discredit any DEI programme of any kind… while ignoring the tragedy for all the families involved. Including those of the pilots and air traffic controllers involved.

He really is a big, orange faced bag of shite. I’d hate to see his response to a large scale tragedy or emergency.

But they are baseless claims......🤷🏼‍♀️

Currently there is no evidence that the FAA hiring policy is responsible for the crash.

Trump has used this tragic event to score political points and to try to prove he was right to address DEI policies.
There is no evidence to support his claims at this stage therefore it's 'baseless'

@CuriousGeorge80

I'm afraid I just don't think your reasoning works.

If a school trip is under-staffed and a child dies, and the trip was under-staffed because of cutbacks, we can absolutely say that cutbacks may have been a factor. We don't need to blame the teacher in order to do that. There might also be others to blame: if the teacher was responsible for risk-assessing, for example, then it may be fair to apportion some blame to them also).

(I'm not saying staffing was definitely a cause here. I'm rebutting your claim that unless I am willing to name a person as responsible for this, DEI can't be to blame. The logic doesn't follow).

And even if your logic were sound, it's an easy test to pass: if DEI was to blame we can absolutely point to individuals. Who devised the programme, didn't pull the plug, etc etc. That's just standard root cause analysis. Inquiries often do that).

No, nothing about it is funny. Which is why it needs to be called out for exactly what it was and people shouldn’t try to justify Trump using a plane crash in which killed 67 people for his own political gain. Because that is what everyone trying to argue he has a point and the reporting is an issue are doing.

I think the conclusion is more likely to end up being ATC error in giving vague directions to the helicopter pilot.

No one should take The Guardian seriously anymore. They are not just biased, they make stuff up to fit their ideology. Wasn’t it just a few days ago they were declaring all embryos were female at conception because male embryos don’t have dicks yet?

I mention respect because people on this thread are making jokes about a crash in which many children died. I think that's twisted, and that using the crash to criticise Trump is just as political as the sick stuff he is doing.

And I say that as someone who hates Trump. I've been to anti Trump protests here in the UK. I am seriously disabled and while I already hated him, mocking the disabled reporter way back in the day absolutely settled it for me. But that doesn't mean I can't still think critically and assess specifics. It's not "Trump bad, therefore anyone who is anti Trump, good".

If. IF IF IF. That’s the issue, right? A world leader who’s so insecure and so egotistical he’d rather just speculate about nonsense about ‘dwarfism’ than say ‘ we need to investigate, find out the facts and make sure this doesn’t happen again’.

The press are just reporting what he said. It’s not slanted. He really is this man.

They didn't give vague directions. What is your basis for this?

I agree with all of this, however it’s very poor form to be stating reasons before the investigation is complete, let alone before it’s even started.

If it turns out to be relevant then Trump is absolutely within his rights to bring this up.

I also agree that the biased reporting is designed to make Trump look like he’s spreading misinformation- which is equally premature of the media.

@verysmellyjelly You are saying we must respect Trump's theory of why the accident happened and what is to blame before there has been an investigation, and anyone who points out he has not evidence is just being a mean to him. You can refer to what you're doing as something else if you like, but it doesn't change the intent.

That isn't inherently ableist. I don't agree with it because it isn't a thoroughly reasoned stance, but there are plenty of rationales for holding that opinion which are not grounded in ableism.

Regardless, Trump simply should not have brought up DEI at all. It shows his essential narcissism and lack of empathy (again), as if we didn't already know. But none of this means you have the right to use ableism as a rhetorical tool to silence others.

It's eminently clear from my comments that I'm not saying that at all. Anyone who actually reads them can see for themselves. I don't appreciate my words being twisted.

You don't think it's weird that all the polls and the bookies (who are always right) had it on too close to call and then suddenly it's a landslide? I don't see that happening. I can see them predicting it wrongly when it's close, or even a surprise win, but a landslide victory is always easily predicted.

OP was attacking the Guardian for a piece on Trumps speech. (the Guardian has multiple other stories on the crash, covering all the topics raised so far on this thread. This piece was specifically about the baseless Trump speech.

Baseless meaning Trump had no basis for blaming dei policies - that has to be a statement of fact - there is no way anyone could know at the time of the speech whether dei had any bearing.

As it happens the Guardian also has an 'opinion' piece explaining logically why trump was wrong. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/30/the-guardian-view-on-the-washington-dc-plane-crash-trumps-warped-priorities

The OPs claim of 'appallingly slanted reporting' is clearly baseless.

listen to the audio. Never gives a direction. Should be giving a ‘at your 9 o’clock’ etc to avoid confusion. I’ve seen a lot of ATC quoted in articles/packages mention this

I did say there was no evidence of ATC being at fault.

The report I linked to is a great start. There is plenty more.

In brief, it's because the test became seen as arbitrary (the new test absolutely was for DEI purposes, explicitly. That is not contested. You can judge for yourself whether you think giving points for saying science was your worst subject at school (etc, there's plenty more bizarre) is arbitrary).

The talent pipeline relies on people self-funding their training at training schools, on the assumption that if they pass the test they will get a job. If the test becomes arbitrary, people will not take that risk. That's in part what happened here. And people who are not of the favoured minority (I'm not being snippy here: the programme set out to increase representation of certain groups, and a group representing that group had sight of the answers, and shared them with members. This is in the court documents, in writing, with original sources) then they are much less likely to apply.

The test in this actual case was rigged. That became known. That broke trust and created a hiring problem.

@WishinAndHopin Trump is within his rights to have an opinion about the cause/s of the accident AFTER WE KNOW IT. Before that though, he's showing poor leadership skills by spreading rumours for political advantage.

The role of the media is to point out when power is behaving irresponsibly, and this is one of those moments. I'd really hoped after the Israeli peace deal that Trump might have turned over a new leaf, but now he's right back to undermining due process to suit himself.

Exactly, which is why every single news outlet is saying the same, but for some reason the OP has singled out the The Guardian and refuses to comment on that. Perhaps works for a competitor.

@heyhopotato I don't think it's weird at all! I think if you look into the political analysis around the situation, it makes a lot of sense. There are some great articles and podcasts by people from all over the political spectrum who discuss what happened and look at what ultimately weighed with swing voters, and it does ultimately "fit", I think. The Democrats made a huge mistake by never holding a primary. Voters sadly didn't connect to Kamala, and the influx of celebrity support and endorsement, while great in itself, ultimately couldn't compensate for that. There just wasn't a strong enough message from the Democratic side. It's heartbreaking for anyone on the left who cares deeply about safe access to abortion (I'm not American but have family over there).

@heyhopotato We certainly get quite a few visitors to Mumsnet these days with very specific talking points, don't we? Puts me in mind of the PR firm in the Blake Lively case...

lying liars who lie all the time and just expect others to believe them and follow what they say because they're tribal and superior to their readers or something. Just because, really. No matter the facts.

Do you not realise that this definition could have been written to exactly describe Donald Trump?

His own former chief of staff, a Republican and a retired 4 star general, called him a pathological liar.

If a child dies on a school trip then based on those facts alone any claim that the death was caused by staffing levels would be a claim made with no evidence. A newspaper would be accurate in reporting that lack of evidence.

Sounds about right for the Guardian. They're not big on scientific reality or fair reporting.

Crisis of competence is right. Part of the problem is that people who call themselves journalists publishing rubbish like this without getting fired. In order to get back to competence, we need people who are useless to get fired. In the Guardian, it has been the good, evidence-based journalists who've left (of their own accord due to the toxic environment for proper journalism).