Contextual Rot

"You're dead, son. Get yourself buried."
--J.J. Hunsecker (Sweet Smell of Success)

A classic practice of shyster journalism is to interview a target that you want to blacken, collect pages of conversation from him/her, and then cut and past small snippets out of the original context to fit your very different context.

Clay Travis demonstrates here. Out of 28 pages of interview quotes, the Washington Post writer hell bent on producing a hit piece selected 94 words to fit his narrative.

Yesterday the Washington Post published a front page hit piece on me in their sports section with many wildly out of context quotes. But I recorded the interview & today I’m publishing the transcript. Get your popcorn. This is what destruction looks like: https://t.co/50T1C3xYwM

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) September 4, 2020

As Travis observes, many people don't have the resources to defend themselves against media ambush. Fortunately Travis does.

If the Washington Post will take my quotes wildly out of context in an effort to make me look bad, how many other people who don’t own their own media companies do they do this to daily? Go read this. And share it. Widely: https://t.co/50T1C3xYwM

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) September 4, 2020

We're all fortunate, really, since Travis is willing to endure discomfort to expose contextual media rot.