The New York Times is getting blasted for its questionable tweet about the obituary of Sam Wyche – a National Football League (NFL) player and coach who as a coach held the record for the most wins with the Cincinnati Bengals until 2011.
Rather than keeping the focus on Wyche’s achievements in the sport, the tweet says Wyche “was later fined by the National Football League for barring a female reporter from the team’s locker room.”
Sam Wyche, who was the last coach to lead the Cincinnati Bengals to the Super Bowl, but who was later fined by the National Football League for barring a female reporter from the team’s locker room, has died https://t.co/A2cnDDYbQu
— NYT Obituaries (@NYTObits) January 7, 2020
Wyche made this decision because he didn’t want his players to be naked in front of female reporters and had arranged for players to come out of the locker room and do interviews with female reporters.
Many Twitter users are comparing this questionable framing of Wyche obituary tweet to The Washington Post’s framing of the deceased leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorist group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdad, as an “austere religious scholar” in his obituary. Others also pointed to the Wyche obituary tweet as an example of “why people flat out hate what the media has become.”
It is a shame he wasn't an "austere religious scholar."
— Andrew Follett (@AndrewCFollett) January 7, 2020
And they wonder why people flat out hate what the media has become.
— Dave Whitman (@DaveWhitman) January 7, 2020
https://twitter.com/mattsideashop/status/1214572124968345600
Or a Revered Military Leader. 🤡🌎
— ₿itcoin Cowboy 🤠 (@rt395minerals) January 7, 2020
Way to dump on a guy when he dies.
FYI- Wyche barred the female reporter from entering out of a sense of common decency for the reporter & the players since it was a place where men were getting dressed/undressed, going to/from the showers, & were obviously naked at times.
— Flannery (@ShotgunCrusader) January 7, 2020
Thank you for calling him out on this. Can’t let the terrorists win pic.twitter.com/gVcezN4K5u
— Dan Stringer, Manager, In-Home Entertainment (@Danstringer74) January 7, 2020
People are also drawing comparisons between framing of this Wyche obituary tweet to the more favorable treatment The New York Times gave to terrorist Qassim Suleimani in his obituary tweet which was posted hours earlier and described him as “Master of Iran’s Intrigue and Force.”
But did he allow women in the locker room??
— GK (@GenieKelsey) January 7, 2020
Presented without comment… pic.twitter.com/Z8dJur96K3
— Dave Rubin (@RubinReport) January 7, 2020
The ratioing of this Wyche obituary tweet comes after a CNN reporter was ratioed yesterday for claiming that satire site The Babylon Bee is using satire to circumvent Facebook’s misinformation rules.
