When journalists quote CopSpeak, and only report the cop's side of the story, that is propaganda. Unquestionably.
When the entire premise of the story is hyper-critical of Amazon, and Amazon's defense is half-hearted, vacuuous, and informationally background, you don't need advanced media literacy to think "Wow, that response from Amazon does NOT pass the bullshit sniff test, huh, I wonder what that means."
How much spoonfeeding do we expect to our readers?
This isn't "A cop said the suspect had a gun, and that's why he shot him" <and we burned zero calories to validate that point>".
This isn't "99.9% of scientists think one thing. 0.1% think the opposite. But we're not going to tell you that, we'll just interview 1 scientist from each position and let you decide."
This is a super critical piece of Amazon that achieves the mandatory standards of reaching out to Amazon for comment, and the comment they got speaks for itself in contrast to the story so clearly that to editorialize on it any further insults the reader's intelligence.
Cops don't say "A cop said the suspect had a gun, and that's why he shot him", they say things like "officer-involved shooting" and "The teen was also a part of the incident and was hit in the abdomen by the one shot fired from the deputy’s gun, he said."
The framing is what matters, and the WaPo story, the frame doesn't question whether or not Amazon's purchase was anti-competitive, just whether or not Amazon did a good job running it
> Cops don't say "A cop said the suspect had a gun, and that's why he shot him",
No, they say “I saw that he had a weapon”, even if the reality is that some other cop said it.
> they say things like "officer-involved shooting"
That's not what the involved cops say, that’s what the department’s public affairs office says as a lead paragraph summary to discourage engagement with the details. (The details will then be whatever story the cops involved say.)
When the entire premise of the story is hyper-critical of Amazon, and Amazon's defense is half-hearted, vacuuous, and informationally background, you don't need advanced media literacy to think "Wow, that response from Amazon does NOT pass the bullshit sniff test, huh, I wonder what that means."
How much spoonfeeding do we expect to our readers?
This isn't "A cop said the suspect had a gun, and that's why he shot him" <and we burned zero calories to validate that point>".
This isn't "99.9% of scientists think one thing. 0.1% think the opposite. But we're not going to tell you that, we'll just interview 1 scientist from each position and let you decide."
This is a super critical piece of Amazon that achieves the mandatory standards of reaching out to Amazon for comment, and the comment they got speaks for itself in contrast to the story so clearly that to editorialize on it any further insults the reader's intelligence.