Tag Archives: stereotypes

Denver Post or The Onion: it’s hard to tell

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One of my favorite Onion headlines is

Stereotypes Are a Real Time-Saver

I’m a busy guy. And, while I’d love to, I don’t have the time to get to know every person I encounter in the course of my daily life. So thank goodness I have a handy little device at my disposal that helps me know how to deal with just about anyone I come across: stereotypes. Yes, stereotypes are a real time-saver!

The Denver Post appears to have borrowed this crucial piece of wisdom to guide its journalistic standards.  In reporting the tragic death of Tom Clements, the Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Corrections, the Post added the following pieces of gratuitous, unsupported, speculation to its initial reports:

Clements’ death occurred a week after he denied a request by a Saudi national, Homaidan al-Turki, to serve out the remainder of a Colorado prison sentence in Saudi Arabia.

The article goes on for three paragraphs to describe the al-Turki case — citing no evidence outside the chronology to connect it to Clements’s murder — but does not offer any further gratuitous, unsupported, speculation concerning other individuals of, say, other races or affiliations.
Colorado corrections officials are investigating whether a paroled white-supremacist prison-gang member at the center of the investigation into the execution-style slaying of state prison chief Tom Clements was ordered by the gang to do a “hit,” a source told The Denver Post on Thursday.
No time, funding, or balls for real reporting?  Stereotypes are a real time-saver!
[Updated to note dates of DP articles.]