Your mainstream media at work: Decide what the story is, then make the facts fit it. If you can. From Jezebel:
Women Profiled in ‘Feminist Housewives’ Piece Say ‘New York’ Misquoted and Misrepresented Them
Kelly Makino and Rebecca Woolf, two of the women featured in New York’s bogus trend piece about “feminist housewives” who are “having it all by choosing to stay home,” say the magazine prevaricated its portrayal of them to fit into its agenda: an “antidote” to Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In that would be sure to gin up controversy….
“I think that in an effort to sell [issues New York] created a fairytale,” she says. “The piece was steeped in archetypes and conservative research, and the goal was to find the opposite of Sheryl Sandberg. Was is completely authentic? Not really. It’s pretty obvious to anyone that it was Disney-fied and edited to fit an agenda, right?”
Rebecca Woolf, who was also featured in the New York piece (albeit briefly, and with no quotes attributed to her), would agree. “This has been the most disgusting misrepresentation of what I do and who I am and what Miller and I spoke for an hour on the phone about,” she told me.
It’s generally especially okay to make up trend pieces. Because who can really contradict them. Maybe you’re not into the latest fads for turtle surfing or dressing your shampoo bottles in tiny knitted lingerie, but who are you to say that other people aren’t?
The spirit of Janet Cooke lives!
Solution is simple. Sue the “New York” for defamation/libel and maybe even fraud (the selling of a fraudulent product).
See also the recent “interview” with Roger Moore that was simply made up.
“Prevaricated”?
Doesn’t good journalism also involve knowing what words mean?