The voters will decide the significance of Guilford County Commissioner and sixth district congressional candidate Billy Yow's t-shirt episode, but, as is my practice here, I find it necessary to comment on yet another local media mistake, this one unfair to Yow.
In yesterday's story about BillyYow.com displaying the repugnant Yow inspired t-shirt, WGHP rolled video of Yow posing with the t-shirt. He is wearing a blue shirt while holding up the t-shirt, seemingly identical to the blue shirt he is wearing when shown speaking on camera. The impression created was that the video of Yow holding up the t-shirt is from the present.
It is not.
Prodded by a reader's comment, I checked with WGHP and they acknowledged that the video of Yow holding up the t-shirt was file footage from the spring of 2004. It was not identified as such in the report and that left this blogger with the impression that Yow was, even to this day, still proudly holding up that insipid t-shirt.
He was not.
I'm a pretty savvy and skeptical consumer of media. If this got past me, it probably created the same false impression with other viewers. The facts of the matter—the who, what and when—can speak for themselves; they don't need to be distorted and the file footage should have been identified as from the past. Not doing so created a false impression that, even if unintentional, was unfair to Yow.
(Thanks to Tony Wilkins who brought the discrepancy to my attention.)
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