No, that’s not a typo in the headline; I spelled journolism exactly as I had intended, reflecting the liberal bias of the newspaper.
The Philadelphia Inquirer is, as I have noted many times, our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, and the winner of twenty Pulitzer Prizes, so one would think that that august journal would cover news that involves the City of Brotherly Love. Well, maybe not, if such news might violate publisher Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes’ edict that the Inky would be an ‘anti-racist news organization.’ From The New York Times:
White Starbucks Manager Fired Amid Furor Over Racism Wins $25 Million
The company fired a former regional manager because of her race amid the fallout from the arrests of two Black men at a Philadelphia store, a federal jury found.
by Ed Shanahan | Tuesday, June 13, 2023
The episode plunged one of America’s most ubiquitous brands into crisis.
In April 2018, two Black men entered a Starbucks shop in the Rittenhouse Square neighborhood of Philadelphia for a business meeting with a white man who had not yet arrived. While they waited, and before ordering, one of the two asked to use the bathroom. He was refused. Eventually, they were asked to leave. When they did not, an employee called the police.
Note the date of the Times story: Tuesday, June 13th. A site search of the Inquirer’s website for “Shannon Phillips”, conducted at 9:38 AM EDT on Wednesday, June 14th, turned up a story, dated October 31, 2019, on Miss Phillips’ lawsuit being filed, but absolutely nothing on her winning that lawsuit, and $25.6 million in damages.
Could it be because Miss Hughes wasn’t publisher of the newspaper in 2019? The newspaper quoted her as having said:
Nothing matters more in our democracy than local journalism, to speak truth to power, to hold elected officials accountable, to celebrate our sports teams’ wins and losses, and to report on justice reform and the education system and gun violence, all of which has been part of The Inquirer’s beat for 190 years.
Apparently, “local journalism” and “speak(ing) truth to power” go into the trash bin when that “local journalism” and “truth” do not fit the newspaper’s “anti-racist” direction!
Back to the Times:
The subsequent arrests, captured in videos viewed millions of times online, prompted accusations of racism, protests and boycott threats. The company’s chief executive apologized publicly, describing the way the men had been treated as “reprehensible.” Starbucks took the extraordinary step of temporarily closing 8,000 stores to teach workers about racial bias.
On Monday, in a surprising twist, a federal jury in New Jersey ordered Starbucks to pay $25.6 million to a former regional manager after determining that the company had fired her amid the fallout from the Rittenhouse Square episode because she was white.
The jury found that Starbucks had violated the federal civil rights of the former manager, Shannon Phillips, as well as a New Jersey law that prohibits discrimination based on race, awarding her $600,000 in compensatory damages and $25 million in punitive damages.
Note that while the Times’ story was dated Tuesday, the verdict was reached on Monday; the Inky had plenty of time to get this story onto its website.
There’s more at the Times’ original, which is interesting, but this article is not about the verdict, but the Inquirer’s biased journolism. An important story about an incident in Philadelphia does not get covered because it doesn’t fit the newspaper’s meme.
Speaking truth to power isn’t about truth but it is about power.
There is no detail of how the regional manager might have been involved in the arrest, the decision to call the Police, or in her distribution of corporate protocols for such an event. Why was she brought into the process at all? It seems that, if the company had a bug about race, and/or use of the facilities, the response would have involved the line employee or the store manager. A lot was buried here.
There is no detail of how the Regional Manager might have been involved in the arrest, the decision to call the Police, or in her distribution of corporate protocols for such an event. Why was she brought into the process at all? It seems that, if the company had a bug about race, and/or use of the facilities, the response would have involved the line employee or the store manager. A lot was buried here.
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The Inquirer finally covered the story, with an article time stamped at 4:09 PM EDT
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