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The hot mess of insults and bad reporting starts out with this headline on the site of Baltimore’s ABC2 news site:
Baltimore City firefighter faces charges after alleged attack on transvestiteBoth men arrested after hammer & scissors attacks
Never mind the GLAAD media reference guide, this is completely off the hook offensive in many newsrooms. How many people’s eyes were on this copy:
“It was alleged that Mr. Majette actually hit the other party in the head with a hammer and there was physical evidence of that,” said Lt. Robert McCullough, “The other party involved in this also assaulted Mr. Majette with a pair of scissors.”Complicating matters is the fact that the woman who faced off with the firefighter, 30-year old Tamara King, is a self-described transvestite who has not completed all of the necessary surgeries to change his sex from male to female.
“Did you think King was a male or female?” we asked his neighbor, Ford.
“As far as I thought, I thought it was just a young girl,” she replied, “You know. A young girl starting out on her own. I didn’t know it was male, female or whatever. I just thought it was a young girl.”
Police say the transvestite claims the two had stripped off their clothing to have sex when the firefighter backed out and attempted to rob him.
The reporter, Jeff Hagar. This editorial team there need some schooling and a copy of the GLAAD media guide sent to them. Here is the contact link, which includes News Director Kelly Groft (groft@wmar.com).
7 Comments
Some thoughts…
Do I think that it has had a bit of quasi-successful nipping-and-tucking around the eyes?
Do I think that it‘s smile has a bit of a Ted Haggard-ish sneer to it?
I actually don’t care, but I do wonder if it enjoys being called it? (Yes, he didn’t do the it-ing, but he didn’t have to air the remarks of the person who did.)
Oh…
What’s up with the hair, Jeff? Are you already planning for Halloween? Some advice: ‘Bad David Letterman-circa-1993 impersonator’ isn’t a costume that’s likely to get you laid.
Slurs-R-UsWould a television station ever describe a black person as a self-described n****r? I was totally appalled by all the its being used.
And since when is surgery “necessary”? Epic monumental FAIL, but unfortunately par for the course on transgender news coverage.
well maybe if the black person in questionadvertised themself on craigslist as a self-described n****r, they would report it on the news?
… and surgery became necessary the moment she got undressed if the guy was not aware (as apparently the neighbor was not aware).
Honestly, I thought the news coverage was pretty fair … but I am sure yall will tell me otherwise
Scrubbing?I made my earlier post based on the text, and not the actual video. Specifically, I refer to my assumption that Hager himself had not engaged in referring to King as “it,” which, based on the text, would be an easy assumption to make.
Sorry, Jeff – but this is what you actually said:
And, as for…
Well, I haven’t heard that from King’s mouth (though, allegedly, there’s a craigslist ad). Still, even if the phrase “self-described transvesite” had a legitimate place in the story,
should have led anyone who doesn’t either have a Fox-ish agenda (I know, this is an ABC affiliate – but we know where Geraldo started out) or have a brain that is in the sub-Palin, Abby Normal range to point out to the viewing public that the person in question may well be transsexual.
jeff hagarWhat a bunch of crap.
Adam May at WJZ-TV CBS Baltimore gave a much better report on this hate crime. When Ms King went to a neighbor for help, the neighbor saw the monster Majette standing over her with a hammer in his hand. (not in his pocket) Majette hasn’t explained the visits to Tamara’s ad on a trans web site that were found in his computers internet history.
Sounds to me like this creep tried to get something for free and the poor girl is afraid of getting prostitution added on after being charged with assault for defending her life from a hammer wielding madman, (who, by the way, hit her in the head with it)
wjz.com/local/jerry.majette.attack.2.1867182.html
Self-described? Umm…Is it too hard, especially given the tone of the crime report, to imagine that Ms. King might not have actually described herself as a transvestite, but rather, that the media itself may have applied that label to her based on her describing herself as something else? (In other words, someone working on the story might not know or care about the difference between the word “transvestite” and other words that begin with “trans-”.) Until we hear from Ms. King herself on this, we might do well to take the media’s “reporting” of the facts with a grain of salt…
No its not too hard at all … … I am only commenting on the information given here to date the same as PHB did.