In what appears to be one of the biggest misses in injecting just a little color to an otherwise unremarkable story we’ve seen in a while, a digital editor for television affiliate chain TEGNA, formerly Gannett Broadcast Media, failed to write “Burger King accused of whopper,” in the headline about a class action lawsuit alleging the fast food giant falsely portrayed the iconic burger offering as 30 percent larger in visual advertising than is sold at its locations, instead opting to describe it as simply “Burger King becomes latest fast food giant to face lawsuit over misleading portion sizes,” in the article published at affiliate sites KTVB.com, KARE11.com, and others in TEGNA’s portfolio.
And they weren’t the only ones either. See Breitbart, Reuters, NBC News, WFSA, Fox 10 Phoenix, WBTV, so on and so forth. Friggin USA Today calls it a “Whopper-size lawsuit” in their headline, which is somehow even worse than the generic, straightforward description of the case.
Like it was right fucking there, man. How do you just let that go? Like everyone likes to go on and on about how the Fourth Estate failed the American public by not doing enough to scrutinize the Bush Administration’s claims of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in the lead-up to the disastrous invasion and their normalization of fascistic rhetoric from right wing politicians and all that other shit.
Where’s all the complaining about failures in reporting like this one though? Besides our bitching about this who else is going to shine a light on the mainstream media’s misses when it comes to shitty, meaningless puns about stupid Burger King lying to consumers as if it should come as some kind of shock to litigious dickwads? Why is it on us to do all the work here? Fuck.