01.15.2018 03:40 PM

Crying hate wolf


21 Comments

  1. doconnor says:

    Probably a case of a kid rebelling against the clothes her parents make her wear and a lie that got out of hand. Can happen in every culture.

  2. Matt says:

    Yep. A slap in the face of those people who experience real racism and hate.

    And yet people like Trudeau, Wynne, Tory an the TDSB are still trying to find a way to portray her as a victim. They all released statements about how gratefull they were the attack didn’t happen. Sure, that’s fine. Everyone’s glad an 11 year old wasn’t attacked. But none of them acknowledged the 10,000 pound elephant in the room.

    She lied.

    Not just a lie to her mother. No. She lied to the police. Then she held a press conference to talk about the “attack” knowing her story was a lie. That’s f–ked up.

  3. whyshouldIsellyourwheat says:

    The Toronto District School Board had an agenda and didn’t protect their student from herself.

    Teachers and schools should know their student, and know if a student is troubled before they attempt to use a student to make a political statement.

  4. Michael Bluth says:

    Surely there are some ink-stained enablers to blame for the amount of coverage this false accusation got?!

    • Derek Pearce says:

      What do you mean? It was taken at face value until it was discovered she lied. So you want further incidents double-vetted somehow or confirmed by police before they are reported on? This is exactly what WK means by a total disaster.

      I’m going to still go with taking these at face value and not let an 11 year old make me wilfully skeptical .

      • Michael Bluth says:

        Not “double-vetted” just properly vetted.

        Clearly proper vetting didn’t happen in this case.

        It’s sad that this was cited as an example of a “rise in Islamophobia” even when it was proven the allegations were false.

    • Obvious Sock-puppet #12 says:

      Indeed. Compare the coverage of this event on the front pages of the Jan. 16, 2018 Toronto newspapers: on the one hand, The Globe & Mail, acting responsibly — and then, on the other hand, everyone else (most especially the Toronto Sun): not so much.

      If newspapers are going to editorialize everything, then, yes, we do get to blame the messenger.

  5. Gyor says:

    It’d be a lot more upset if it wasn’t a young child. If it was an adult or older teen even I’d be really angery. Instead I’d want to know if her parents we’re forcing her to wear it and she didn’t want to.

  6. Charlie says:

    The kid lied.

    Kids tend to do that.

    Where she got the idea to do something she very clearly knew would strike a particular cord with the public, is something that needs to be a part of the public discussion. A child only learns to call wolf if they know that a wolf is a sensitive threat.

    But the kid is almost irrelevant here at this point. I want to know what the decision making process behind the press conference was, every step of the way:

    – Why was the kid allowed to appear in a press conference at a public school so fresh off the incident?
    – Why was the media so prepared to broadcast the girl’s story and provide it wide coverage without caution as to the lack of details and state of the investigation?
    – Why did reporters not include police commentary in the initial broadcasts or at the very least, provide a discretionary to the public?
    – Now that the police have notified the media that the story was in fact fabricated, will the media follow up further? I.e. a statement from the school or mother?
    – If not, why not?

    I’m actually willing to place blame on one participant in this story, and that is the media. There is no reason why immediate, live coverage should ever have been warranted in this situation and media networks have driven social discourse into the ground by treating every occurrence with a sense of emergency. We end up with a hot-take culture that leaves us pathetically ill-informed and further driven to reaffirm our own opinions in quick defense.

    We keep beating around this bush, but when are we going to confront just how terrible a mediator of information the media has become?

    • Matt says:

      I don’t often agree with you, but those are some good questions to ask.

      I’d add was this complete fabrication all from the girl, or did an adult (Parent? Teacher?) put her up to it.

      And if an adult did put her up to it, why are police not pursuing at least mischief charges against the adult.

      • Charlie says:

        I’m heartened by our opinions finally intersecting on something, Matt.

        I don’t know that the girl was put up to anything and at this point, there’s no evidence to suggest so.

        Which is possibly why if the police have concluded their investigation, there just are no charges that could be pursued given that it is a minor.

        But, I think our collective energy could be better spent directing our attention to the series of bad judgments in the unfolding of the incident. The media had a complete disregard of the overhyping effect the massive spotlight would have and there was an utter abdication of responsibility by the school teachers and police spokesperson to get in front of the cameras with the girl.

    • Montréalaise says:

      And another question: why was the press conference held so hastily, before the police even had a chance to complete their investigation? Who was responsible for that decision?

  7. rww says:

    The media attitude seems to be better to get the story wrong than get it second.

  8. Ronald O'Dowd says:

    What Warren said.

  9. Matt says:

    Interesting tweet from Joe Warmington from the Toronto Sun:

    Joe Warmington‏
    Verified account
    @joe_warmington

    Everyone in the media on the scene felt it was a made up story from the beginning. Nothing added up. But TPS and TPSB suggested otherwise.
    8:20 AM – 15 Jan 2018 from Mississauga, Ontario

    So they knew the story was bullshit, but reported it anyway.

    • JH says:

      Yep & with CBC leading the way. And then last night on the National sent Ian out to try and explain/deflect away their irresponsible crap . Same goes for all the virtue signalling from Trudeau, puppet master Gerry Butts, Wynne, John Tory & Scheer. Late yesterday and again today these dupes are all scrambling to save face. The splattered eggs look good on all their mugs.

  10. The Doctor says:

    This just makes me groan in pain, because Breitbart and others on the alt-right continually push this “most hate crimes are faked” BS (Sebastian Gorka is a big proponent of this). And this, of course, will give them ammo, even though one falsely reported hate crime is a miniscule drop in the bucket compared to all of the real ones. So this kid just unfortunately fed that monster.

  11. Doug Brown says:

    How different would the coverage have been if she had claimed her touque or ball cap had been cut?

    • Lyndon Dunkley says:

      Or if the perp (imaginary or not) had been an 11 year old white boy. We would know everything about his parents with calls to charge them, Child Welfare Services would be involved and he would definitely not be getting the “he was only 11, kids make mistakes” defense.

Leave a Reply to Matt Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.