Clicks-Clicks-Clicks: the Mark of the Daily Beast

posted on 4/24/2019 by the Salt City Sinner

Because of my unconventional religious beliefs, I expect to be misrepresented and unfairly pilloried. Anyone who stakes out a controversial position that pushes the envelope of free speech or the free exercise of religion can expect some pushback, whether their cause be just (as is the case with the Satanic Temple or ACLU), unjust (conservative Evangelicals writ large, trolls like Roger Stone), or legally-protected but unconscionable (the alt-right, the Westboro Baptist Church). When right wing figures squawk, whine, and weep about how persecuted they are when people quite predictably hate what they have to say, I don’t think it’s the least bit in good faith, because as a Satanist – and, thus, someone whose speech is also often unpopular – I expect to have to deal with the social consequences of my beliefs.

Now, on the other hand, the correction of lies and misrepresentations – I think that’s both fair and a productive use of my time. And if both the headline and a giant block quote in an article fundamentally misrepresent – in fact, invert – the meaning of same, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to speculate that an agenda might be in play.

I’ve written about The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’s first season, and what I perceived as a deliberately anti-Satanist bias in the show’s writing. Specifically, I said that Sabrina wasn’t just a potshot at Satanism in general, but an attempt to slander the Satanic Temple, an organization of which I am a proud, card-carrying member. It is now my suspicion that a similar agenda is at play somewhere in the belly of the Daily Beast.

Tarpley Hitt’s April 21 interview with director Penny Lane is excellent. Lane’s new documentary, Hail Satan?, is an exploration of the Satanic Temple – who we are, where we came from, and what we want, and Hitt’s interview is wide-ranging and informative.

That makes this all the more inexplicable:

The full question and response make it obvious that Lane is referring to the Church of Satan, not the Satanic Temple, when she says this – and specifically in a question about the difference between the two! – as you can read for yourself:

Can you rewind to how the Church of Satan thinks it owns Satanism? Is there beef there? 

Oh God, yeah. It’s the most annoying part of my life right now. A couple times a day I check Twitter to see what’s going on with my movie. And every review or every attention the movie gets, the Church of Satan has to be like: “They are not Satanists! We are the only real Satanists! This movie is not about Satanism!” And I’m just like, you’re only making yourselves look bad. No one is going to look at this from the outside and be like, who are these get-off-my-lawn-old-people? This beef just doesn’t seem necessary. But that’s what’s happening. They all hate each other. They just argue on Twitter all day. It’s just super boring and depressing to everyone else in the world.

Then there’s the headline. At the article itself, the headline is a neutral (and accurate) description: “’Hail Satan?’ Director Penny Lane on Becoming a Card-Carrying Satanist.” But if you read the article URL, you will see the headline that appeared as a link and at aggregators: “’Hail Satan?’ Director Penny Lane REGRETS Becoming a Card-Carrying Satanist.” That headline is deliberately misleading. If you read the interview, her sentiment is that:

Last question: I heard you joined the Satanic Temple. How’d that happen? 

It never really occurred to me that this was going to be something that anyone cared about. And if I had thought it through, I probably wouldn’t have done it. It just causes problems for me now, because people want to be like, oh it’s made by a member! It’s propaganda! Getting a membership card to the Satanic Temple is a pretty low bar for supporting the organization. I sent them $20 and I got a card. I like my card and I feel very aligned with and allied to the work they do. But, like I said, if I had a time machine, I wouldn’t have done it. Because it’s the kind of thing now that seems a little more significant than it is.

If you’ve read this far, I assume that you’re not someone who simply scans headlines or reads block quotes and/or skims articles, and then moves on to the next dangling, jingling set of shiny keys. But I also suspect that you are aware that that makes you unusual among news consumers. I think that crafting a clickbait-y headline and misleading pull quote for an article – the two most-read and highest-viewed aspects of the content – is an act of journalistic malpractice at best. It could also be a deliberate act of disinformation.

So: titillation or deliberate dishonesty? I won’t pretend to know the author’s (or editor’s), for lack of a better term, soul. But you know what they say; the devil is in the details.