Gategate
Just attaching ‘gate’ to the end of every controversial thing that pops into the news is bullshit, historically blind, and beyond insulting. There’s no way for the audience to understand that they should be concerned about something unless you attach ‘gate’ to the end of it?
The repeated use and assumptions involved in ‘*-gate’-ing things is like the ultimate media-to-audience insult. By doing so, media outlets assume you don’t know what Watergate was and you’re too stupid to understand why a topic should make you furious unless they ‘gate’ it. Even worse… it implies that unless someone attaches -gate to the end of something, it’s not really a big deal. Too bad there’s no finance-crisis-gate, gun-deaths-gate, or ebola-gate, apparently, they’re not worth caring about.
Adding -gate assumes your audience is idiots, robs them of any need to understand history, and devalues other coverage. It’s incredibly condescending. Don’t do it.
“Everything we blog, everything we Tweet, and everything we click is a public act of making media. We…”
““Everything we blog, everything we Tweet, and everything we click is a public act of making media. We are the new editors. We decide what gets attention based on what we give our attention to. That’s how the media works now. There’s all these hidden algorithms that decide what you see more of and what we all see more of based on what you click on, and that in turn shapes our whole culture.””
– “Don’t like clickbait? Don’t click”, Sally Kohn (2014)
“Yep, female journalists were the only subjects that got trolled on and verbally abused more than…”
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Yep, female journalists were the only subjects that got trolled on and verbally abused more than men.
More than 5 percent of all Twitter messages sent to female journalists are unfavorable, according to the study. In every other category of distinguished females, however, the number is much lower, at 1 in every 70 tweets.
Aside from being the target of Twitter attacks, female journalists are also the subject of high rates of sexual harassment in the workplace, are paid less than their male counterparts and are underrepresented on editorial boards and in opinion pages.
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