Shining a Spotlight on Anti-Homeless Reporters

by Josmar Trujillo

Breaking news from the New York Post (12/30/19): A man is "grabbing food from the trays and shoving it directly into his mouth, wet with drool and framed by a scraggly beard."

With every new year, out come our usual resolutions: Let's quit smoking, give up meat, or maybe we can lose those extra 15 pounds we always say we should. Alas, for some of us, it's hard to change our ways. Case in point, the New York Post cannot and will not give up its obsessive, cruel and deranged fascination with shaming homeless people.

The Post going after homeless people is old news, yes, I know; the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper’s disdain for the poor is well-documented. But the paper closed out 2019 with a master class in homeless shaming . Gothamist (1/2/20) gave an appropriately acerbic account of the story (New York Post, 12/30/19) of “a drooling and pungent homeless man” using a Whole Foods buffet:

We're told that the bar has "No Sampling" signs, that the man has "visibly dirty mitts" and is "grabbing food from the trays and shoving it directly into his mouth, wet with drool and framed by a scraggly beard." (The man's beard is worth two mentions.)

Gothamist reminds us of the tabloid's weeks-long crusade in 2016 about a homeless woman who had the audacity to push around multiple carts of her possessions. And there were also the multiple front-page stories in 2015 about a homeless man that the newspaper claimed was making $200 an hour by begging.

The Post seems to bask in the glory of their crusade. Their commitment to following around poor human beings suggests that the paper and its employees have taken a pledge to deliver sneering content to the imagined everyman reader who they think hates the homeless as much as they do. But they go beyond merely reporting: On New Year's Day, the Post reported on a "shanty town" in Manhattan, where homeless people still lingered despite authorities having removed the pesky poor after a previous call from the paper.

Another New York Post scoop (7/10/15): Man lowering tone in Post editor's neighborhood.

The Post's homeless-shaming in New York City—where homelessness is relatively high—even shapes coverage of other papers. After the tabloid chased around a homeless man waiting for him to pee (in the same neighborhood the Post’s then-editor Col Allan lived in) and putting it on their front cover (twice) a few years ago, the New York Times (7/15/15) followed suit by citing Post front pages, with its own in-depth pee story:

Evidence pools beneath rows of pay phones, between parked cars, outside bars where last call has come and gone. The culprits can be found in any neighborhood of New York City: the West Village or Williamsburg, Chelsea or Elmhurst.

The piece did note, citing the late NYPD stats maven Jack Maple, that “‘Wall Street analysts doing Jell-O shots’ on Madison Avenue” may be as prone to public urination as “‘a crew of robbers drinking malt liquor’ in East New York,” but endorses Maple’s contention that police should go after the latter rather than the former, because they’re the ones “relaxing after a long day of robbing.”

The Times went on to complain that arrests for public urination are not concentrated enough in poorer neighborhoods—or, in Times-speak, “neighborhoods historically subjected to the highest numbers of recorded police stops.” There was, of course, no mention of any relationship between public urination and poverty or homelessness.

The New York Times (7/15/15) follows up on the Post's journalistic lead.

As FAIR (Extra!, 3–4/90) noted almost 30 years ago, the Times has exhibited its own anti-homeless bias, a trait that seems to infect much of the press. As I wrote in 2015 (FAIR.org, 11/24/15) following a "quality of life" panel at the conservative Manhattan Institute, members of the media, opinion columnists and police leaders all seem to share the loathing—helping to make homeless-bashing in the media a national and international phenomenon.

While homelessness or begging aren't crimes, media coverage is often shaded with a criminal insinuation, or connected to a sense of fear. Adam Johnson and Nima Shirazi of Citations Needed (9/4/19, 9/11/19) explained this succinctly in a great two-part podcast last year:

As housing costs skyrocket and inequality grows, homelessness is reaching crisis levels in large metropolitan areas. In response, the media—namely local news stations—routinely treat the homeless like an invading species, a vermin to be at best contained, and at worst eradicated.

The result has been a slew of stories pathologizing those experiencing homelessness as uniquely dangerous. Panhandlers are viewed as con men out to screw over the working man, chased down by vigilantes with the help of outraged local news “standing up” to the poor.

So what to do? The New York Post, ironically, seems incapable of shame. They saw a significant amount of pushback on Twitter after the Whole Foods story. Many people expressed revulsion, not for the homeless people the paper harassed, but for the paper itself. Still, in spite of the criticism, they went on to publish the "shantytown" story.

CBS New York (1/8/20) inaccurately describes spitting as an "HIV attack."

In a related development, alarmist media coverage led by the Post has aided law enforcement’s attempt to roll back reforms of New York's archaic bail laws that have long been predicated on whether or not you could afford to buy your freedom. However, pushback on social media has provided a counterbalance of sorts.

CBS New York (1/8/20) was criticized for a horrible story (since reedited) about a judge’s release of someone supposedly carrying the HIV virus that allegedly spit into a police officer's mouth. The story and tweets from the CBS New York official Twitter account described this as an “HIV ATTACK”—blatant fearmongering, given that HIV cannot be transmitted through saliva.

After considerable criticism after the story and tweets, the local CBS affiliate fired the reporter who posted the story, claiming it was published without being reviewed by editors—hard as it may be to believe that a reporter was able to publish a story and tweet from the affiliates account with no oversight. Was this a win for media critics and advocates?

Bashing outlets like the Post is unlikely to change or deter them. Protests against the tabloid have gone on for years. The paper has even withstood an organized boycott by Yemeni bodega owners (which could have severely affected their bottom line, as bodegas are a key distribution point for local papers). The company can probably endure twitter-storms and boycotts. The Post loses millions of dollars every year—how many millions is anybody’s guess—and serves more as a vehicle for Murdoch’s political agenda than as a source of revenue, so it’s relatively insulated from economic pressure.

However, criticism may have hit a nerve when it specifically targeted the reporters. (For the record, the Post’s homeless-in-Whole-Foods expose required the skills of three journalists: Kenneth Bachor, Elizabeth Rosner and Aaron Feis.)

Don't get mad at someone who is just doing their job, which is mocking poor people (Twitter, 1/1/20).

As some of those reporters were railed against on social media, their peers and colleagues came valiantly to their defense. Buzzfeed's news director and editor-in-chief both weighed in to chastise people for shaming the shamers: "As a rule of thumb, please yell at editors rather than reporters on this website, it's usually our fault," tweeted editor Ben Smith.

Post editor Joe Tacopino chimed in to wag his finger at critics, fearing they could "unleash an angry mob" against reporters who were simply and courageously doing their jobs. Ah yes, the angry "fake news" mob. Maybe instead of tweeting, people will follow reporters and snap pictures of them all around the city. Too cruel?

While it's certainly true that publishers, editors and owners are ultimately most responsible for anti-homeless media coverage, this doesn't mean there isn’t enough blame left over for beat reporters and journalists willing to cut their teeth by punching down. After all, when journalists win awards for their reporting, they don’t send their editors to collect the prizes; shouldn’t they also accept the outrage that their articles provoke?

For years, FAIR has catalogued media shenanigans and bias, and part of that has been naming reporters and criticizing their work. Media critiques must name journalists who shame the homeless, or who perform police stenography (attributing all or most of the narrative of a story to law enforcement statements), and even hateful opinion writers like the New York Times' Bret Stephens.

And yes, while there is a clear difference between a media apex predator like Stephens and a bottom-rung beat reporter, journalists cannot be absolved, any more than can ICE officers, on the excuse that they are simply following orders from up high.

Over the past few years, there has been considerable anguish about the death of local journalism. However, if people only strive to "save" it without acknowledging its pitfalls, that only serves to keep the profession insulated, with reporters and editors clamoring to defend only themselves. While concerted media criticism might be met with accusations of "bullying" the media, it really is more about tying reporters to what they write—in effect giving them the spotlight that they themselves like to shine on the most vulnerable among us.

ACTION ALERT: Messages to the New York Post can be sent to [email protected] (or via Twitter: @NYPost). Remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments for this post.