Senior journalism major
“Is Macklemore A 9/11 Truther?”
“Did Grammy-winner Macklemore used to tweet homophobic jokes?”
On BuzzFeed, The Washington Post and plenty of other websites, headlines such as these popped up after Macklemore’s successful Grammy night Sunday. The answer to both questions is “no.” Macklemore is not a 9/11 truther. And he’s not a homophobe. But the Internet has no time for context. Instead, these headlines were irresponsibly published and circulated, eventually becoming recognized as established facts, regardless of their truth.
BuzzFeed’s big “expose” featured a Macklemore tweet from Sept. 18, 2009: “911…bush knocked down the towers.” Certainly, this tweet deserves attention and speculation; Macklemore seems like a fairly smart guy, and it would be interesting if he held the radical belief that 9/11 was a conspiracy.
But he doesn’t. His next tweet, posted eight minutes later, said, “Was just bumping that mos def/immortal technique song…good song.” He’s not a 9/11 conspiracy theorist. Just a rapper quoting a rap song. The only revelation here is that Macklemore doesn’t like to use proper grammar in his tweets.
Still, I suppose it’s understandable that in today’s fast-paced media landscape, BuzzFeed would take the tweet and run with it, then do some further reporting. Once the site’s contributors found out the tweet just quoted a lyric, surely they’d take the story down or update the accusatory headline, right?
Nope. Instead, the headline hasn’t changed, and the story is still up. There is an update saying the tweet “appears to be lyrics” from an Immortal Technique song, but it’s posted at the bottom of the article, not the top.
I’ve made it pretty clear in past columns that I truly love BuzzFeed and believe it serves a valuable purpose in the media landscape. But these types of headlines are unethical and unfair. The article has 189,634 total views. That’s a ton of people who could be mistakenly telling their friends Macklemore is a 9/11 truther.
BuzzFeed’s headline was still outdone by others: “Macklemore’s strange ‘no homo’ tweet raises eyebrows,” reads a Salon headline from Tuesday, claiming to find “homophobe-ish” tweets from Macklemore’s past: “I’m so happy right now,” one reads. “No homo…I love new york! Pause. I’m so not gay! F*** yea. And I’m so secure in that!”
At first glance, this is a pretty fascinating tweet. Perhaps Macklemore is a hypocrite and “Same Love” is just a stunt to capitalize on the marriage equality movement. But give the tweet another read, and it’s pretty clear — this is obviously sarcasm. The exclamation points are meant to poke fun at the hip-hop community and irresponsible use of gay slurs. Other tweets from Macklemore’s past reveal consistent beliefs: “#youhavealreadyfailed when you start off your sentence with ‘hey man, i’m not trying to be a homo or anything,’” he wrote in 2010.
The Washington Post mentioned another potentially controversial tweet, in which Macklemore used a word derogatory toward lesbians. But again, this tweet merely referenced two official softball team names in Seattle. Nothing to see here.
Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard, has referred to this unfortunate phenomenon as “journalism as an act of pointing — ‘Look over here, this is interesting.’” Sometimes, there’s a legitimate case to be made for this type of “publish first, report later” mentality. But these headlines are problematic because they ask questions rather than answer them. “Is Macklemore a 9/11 Truther?” “Did Macklemore tweet homophobic jokes?” If the answer is no, the article shouldn’t have been published to begin with.
Adam Offitzer is a senior journalism major. He can be reached at aoffitzer@gmail.com.
