Tuesday, January 30, 2024

WTF journalism?

Charlotte Chilton's "40 Iconic Couples From the '70s" (ELLE) raised the WTF question.  Repeatedly. 



There's the factual issue of "but split."  Farrah Fawcett and Lee Majors did not split in 1982 -- ("they divorced" which implies they split then) -- Farrah Fawcett and Ryan O'Neal became a couple in 1979.  Or take this on Jane Fonda and Roger Vadim, "They were together for eight years and had one child together, but split in 1973."  Uh.  No.  They split in 1969.  Jane Fonda was seeing, among others, Donald Sutherland in 1970.  So, no, Roger and Jane weren't a supercouple of the 70s.  As for the 1973 divorce?  Jane was pregnant with Tom Hayden's child and married him three days after the divorce was final (January 19, 1973).  Or this on Goldie Hawn and Mark Harmon, "The couple married in 1976, but by 1982 they were done." No, they were doing in August of 1980 when Goldie filed for divorce.  We could do that all day long.  


But what really puts the WTF into this article from ELLE would be sentences like this from their blurb for Diane Keaton and Warren Beatty, "The couple began dating in 1978 and he even casted her in his 1981 filmReds."  Casted?  He casted her?  Cast.  He cast her.  


And runner up for the week produced this sentence, "On stage during a Monday appearance at the University of California, Berkeley’s law school, the first Latina justice spoke to the demands of the gig's demands at her age since she was appointed by former President Barack Obama in 2009."


The demands of the gig's demands?  Googling should provide you with the runner up's outlet and name.