Wow, what a coincidence!!!

The headlines:

• NBC News: Christian school expels teen after rainbow sweater and
  cake were deemed ‘lifestyle violations’
• Fox News: Kentucky student expelled from private Christian school
  over rainbow shirt and cake, mom claims
• Courier Journal: Louisville Christian school expelled student over a
  rainbow cake, family says
• BuzzFeed News: This Mom Is Claiming A Christian School Expelled Her
  Teen Daughter Over A Picture With A Rainbow Cake
• NY Post:Teen expelled from Christian school after rainbow shirt,
  cake photo
• Chicago Tribune: Girl expelled from Christian school after posing with
  rainbow cake
• New York Daily News: Freshman expelled from school for wearing rainbow shirt
• The Washington Post: “Christian school expels teen after she posed with rainbow birthday cake, mother says.”

All of these headlines are misleading and deceitful, and intentionally so. This combines several varieties of Fake News, including “Outright false stories” deliberately published to mislead, “Fake headlines and clickbait,” and “Incompetent reporting.”

The facts of the episode only incidentally involve a rainbow cake, and the incident in question was the culmination of an ongoing contractual violation, not the extreme homophobia that that the various stories represented it to be. The frequent use of “mom says” and “family says” were cover for deliberately incompetent reporting. The family was, to be blunt, lying, and the truth of the episode was readily available to anyone with the diligence and integrity to look for it.

The Post story was typical of media confirmation bias at work, and indeed was the one many other sources began with. Reporter Michael Brice-Saddler wrote that  Kimberly Alford bought a custom a cake to celebrate the 15th birthday of her daughter, Kayla Kenney.  Alford told the credulous reporter that she instructed the bakery to decorate a cake with bright colors that ‘pop,’ and by purest accident, the resulting rainbow design matched her daughter’s sweater that she just happened to be wearing though she is not gay. Mom took a picture of Kayla smiling next to the birthday cake, not that there’s anything wrong with that.

If anyone believes the story about the amazing rainbow coincidence, I have a bridge to sell them. Yet the Post reporter did, just as Post reporters chose to believe that a Catholic school boy in a MAGA cap was harassing and smirking at a helpless old Native American.

The Post story continued, Continue reading →