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"Nightmare Tenant" Story Amplified by Seattle Times Crumbles Under Scrutiny

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Re: "Nightmare Tenant" Story Amplified by Seattle Times Crumbles Under Scrutiny

#13
post #3

Unsurprising, but it did it's job of energizing and outraging the right. Seattle City council was just swept by them, too.

This will absolutely be used as a talking point by landlords to push for laws that make renting even more miserable in this country.

It seems that these days the only way to prevent this kind of rage bait is to make it unprofitable to publish a story so misleading. The Seattle times is just another news outlet that has found the most profitable model is printing rage bait, and there seems to be no shortage of people who will fall for it in increasingly dangerous ways.

Re: "Nightmare Tenant" Story Amplified by Seattle Times Crumbles Under Scrutiny

#15

[flagged]

I lived in a large, left leaning metro area for 10yrs and they can't even be bothered to ban landlords from passing their business expenses to tenants as a condition for signing a lease.

Because that's what brokers are when the only value they're providing is the work a landlord doesn't want to do, like advertising a space or handling lease paperwork. A business expense.

You want to talk about what makes rents worse and availability lower? Let's look at charging an entire additional month's rent up front to pay a third party.

Re: "Nightmare Tenant" Story Amplified by Seattle Times Crumbles Under Scrutiny

#16

A reminder that anytime an outlandish or shocking sounding claim is made, to follow up on its veracity. Usually it is much less surprising. For example: that lady that sued McDonald’s for coffee being hot… sued because the coffee was hot enough to melt flesh, which she experienced firsthand. And don’t take my word for it because that, too, is shocking. 0. 0 - https://www.tortmuseum.org/liebeck-v-mcdonalds/

And, famously, it turned out that the "brown M&Ms" clause in Van Halen's performance contract was a canary to see whether venues carefully read the contract -- not an example of rock star overweening entitlement.

I remember an article about a letter Ayn Rand wrote to her teenage niece. It was clear from the article text surrounding the letter that the author intended for the reader to pass judgement against Rand as a horrid, unfeeling aunt. But the actual text of the letter told a different story: Rand had agreed to lend $25 to the niece to buy a new dress, on the condition that she repay it within a year: six months to find a job, and then in six monthly installments after that, under pain of being considered an "embezzler" and being cut off from contact with her aunt altogether. Which is very... Ayn Rand, but a wholly unkind aunt would never have lent the money in the first place, let alone at no interest. And Rand also wished to convey a lesson: a responsible person does not enter into debt without the intent of repaying it in full. Something more teenagers especially today could stand to learn. This letter is probably least on the list of things to judge Ayn Rand for.

Because of things like these I tend to check claims in sensationalist journalism much more carefully now.

Re: "Nightmare Tenant" Story Amplified by Seattle Times Crumbles Under Scrutiny

#17

A reminder that anytime an outlandish or shocking sounding claim is made, to follow up on its veracity. Usually it is much less surprising. For example: that lady that sued McDonald’s for coffee being hot… sued because the coffee was hot enough to melt flesh, which she experienced firsthand. And don’t take my word for it because that, too, is shocking. 0. 0 - https://www.tortmuseum.org/liebeck-v-mcdonalds/

As anyone ever interviewed by a journalist or even remotely attached to a news-worthy event can tell you, it's not just the shocking claims that deserve follow-up.

We're all prone to Gell-Mann amnesia.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge...

Re: "Nightmare Tenant" Story Amplified by Seattle Times Crumbles Under Scrutiny

#18
Trying not to sound as sensationalist as the original story, but this part specifically had me infuriated:

"Hunter has had less luck. Of the news stories, he said: “They’re infuriating but they’re comical if you have the facts… I tried to give the facts to KIRO, I tried to give the facts to Daily Mail, I tried to give the facts to Business Insider. I would send them actual proof of everything, and none of that mattered. They just wanted that [online] engagement.”

How do we solve that problem? Educate people to instead read properly informed news sources that still have journalistic integrity? Hold the journalists to a higher standard and call them out when printing sensationalist stories? Even if they are called out, the damage is usually already done. The press is supposed to check society, but who checks the press?

Re: "Nightmare Tenant" Story Amplified by Seattle Times Crumbles Under Scrutiny

#19
post #18

Trying not to sound as sensationalist as the original story, but this part specifically had me infuriated: "Hunter has had less luck. Of the news stories, he said: “They’re infuriating but they’re comical if you have the facts… I tried to give the facts to KIRO, I tried to give the facts to Daily Mail, I tried to give the facts to Business Insider. I would send them actual proof of everything, and none of that matter…

“I tried to give the facts to Daily Mail” is just a deeply funny statement.
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