The situation involving the missing Titanic explorer sub took a tragic turn today with the U.S. Coast Guard announcing the sub had suffered a “catastrophic implosion” and that there were no survivors among the five who were onboard.
Here are the names and photos of those who perished:
While our thoughts and prayers are with their families, it’s also important to point out that the story as it developed brought out the worst in some folks, as evidenced by a “report” from the far-left “New Republic” website, which for some reason thought it was vital to alert readers that OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush had made donations to Republicans.
From the article:
Public campaign finance records indicate that Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate currently stuck on the missing Titan submersible that was running a tourist expedition of the Titanic wreck, has been a consistent Republican donor over the years.Now a point of caveat here: According to these public finance records, Rush was not a Republican megadonor, but his donations over the years leaned heavily toward Republican candidates.Federal Election Commission campaign finance filings show a Stockton Rush of Washington state employed by OceanGate giving $1,500 to Culberson for Congress, the principal campaign committee for now-former Republican Congressman John Culberson who represented Texas’s 7th district from 2001 to 2019. Culberson had a 100 percent scorecard rating from the conservative Family Research Council, a 92 percent lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union, and a 4 percent lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters. Not exactly a RINO.
Later, we learned that the staff writer for the piece, Daniel Strauss, had actually sought out comments from Washington state Democrats to confirm whether or not Stockton Rush was just a run-of-the-mill political donor or a GOP megadonor:
Washington state Democratic consultants told The New Republic they don’t regard these donations as a sign that Rush is anything like a GOP megadonor, just that he leans to the right.
Understandably, the story sparked outrage to the point that tweets from the publication on it (including this one – archived link here) have disappeared.
But the Internet, as they say, is forever:
Not surprisingly, CNN brought Strauss on – presumably to talk about his “report”:
I don’t have a prestigious journalism degree, nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but something I do know is that when you’re a reporter, and you write something, it should have some journalistic value to readers by striving to inform them of things they might like to know about a current event, an ongoing situation, an important public figure, etc.
What journalistic value did the story on Stockton Rush’s political donations, published at a time when he and the others onboard might have been taking their last breaths or already dead, bring to anyone? I mean, I guess what we were supposed to get from that is that maybe the author of the story thought Rush deserved to die along with the others because of his political leanings?
It makes no sense.
I get that there’s going to be criticism for taking on such an endeavor, along with criticism over the fact that Rush, despite his GOP donations, seemed to be “woke” on some level when it came to hiring experienced crew members, and also allegedly cut corners when it came to safety. I also get that there are going to be people who (understandably) believe that any rescue effort that potentially would have involved more loss of life should not have been undertaken for people who likely knew the risks they were taking from the outset.
All of those criticisms are valid and speak to questioning a person’s judgment. That’s relevant, and it’s newsworthy.
But it strikes me as unseemly and grotesque to make a person’s political donations a focal point of a potentially tragic story that has nothing to do with politics. Especially when one considers that at the time the story was published, it was speculated that the vessel’s oxygen supply was about to run out (assuming it had not already imploded).
In my opinion, what gets lost sometimes in the midst of the frenzy of developing stories and reactions to them is the human component:
As history has shown us over and over again, in man versus sea battles, the sea almost always wins, and unfortunately that is how the Titanic sub story turned out.
As history has also shown us, there are some “journalists” out there for who callousness and scoring cheap political points take precedence over actual journalism and compassion.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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