When Morgan Wallen playfully referenced one of his friends with the N-word in a drunken exchange on a public street on January 31 and it was captured by a neighbor's ring doorbell camera, he imagined himself and all country music as Deputy in the crosshairs of violent criticism in the midst of the already controversial Kulturkampf. After the incident was uncovered by TMZ on February 2, all of the ramifications Morgan Wallen faced were deemed warranted. In 2021 you need to know how to get caught on this word as a Caucasian.
For Morgan Wallen, the condemnation was quick and harsh, although his music continued to be popular as his fan base increased to fill the void of support left by radio, award shows, booking agencies and streaming services that all dropped Wallen. Its fans have kept its most recent release, Dangerous: The Double Album, consistently at the top of the country album charts since then, and it will likely stay there through 2022.
But the ongoing media obsession and exaggeration of the now 9 1/2 month old incident in attempting to accuse all of country music of racism and to exclude Morgan Wallen from pop culture entirely was not only pathetically unsuccessful, it was right on of the support that Morgan Wallen continues to receive from its fans.
On Monday, September 20th, Rolling Stone published a breathless and passionate article entitled "'Exceptionally Misleading": Morgan Wallen has pledged $ 500,000 to black-led groups, but the money seems largely to M.I.A. to be." claimed Morgan Wallen only delivered $ 165,000 of the $ 500,000 he pledged to black charities after the N-word incident. The promise came in an interview Wallen Michael Strahan gave on Good Morning America on July 23. But just like many reports from the once respected Rolling Stone outlet, the article was designed more to sow shock and outrage than to educate and inform. And most importantly, it was obviously and demonstrably wrong.
The Rolling Stone article, authored by Jason Newman, went out of its way to pat itself on the back for the depth of its research. It recognized Wallen for donating $ 165,000 to the Black Music Action Coalition. But Rolling Stone also claimed that the Wallen donations stopped there. How did you know that exactly? They claimed to turn to “56 state, regional, and national black-run or black-founded charities. Neither of them claimed to have received any money from Wallen. ”But that boast is also the folly of their reporting. Even Rolling Stone admits in the article that the 56 charities it surveyed were taken from a "compendium of Tennessee charities compiled by Give Blck, an organization that serves more than 700 black-run nonprofits nationwide has put together ".
In other words, the Rolling Stone has only reached 8% of known black charities in the United States, but touted their research as thorough and used it to make false allegations against Morgan Wallen. In addition, Rolling Stone acknowledges that Morgan Wallen's donations may have been made through an intermediary or may have been made anonymously. Says Rolling Stone, "While it is possible for Wallen to donate anonymously, it would be an abrupt U-turn from his earlier flashy public mea culpas, financial statements and charitable efforts."
Rather than doing the real work of really verifying that the donations were made by Morgan Wallen and / or being patient enough to wait for the information to be fully disclosed, Rolling Stone assumed the donations were made not to have all been delivered and then wrote their article around this assumption. Rather than presenting the facts of the problem since they didn't have any, Rolling Stone replaced them with lines and sentences of plausible deniability if their assumption about Morgan Wallen's lack of donations ultimately turned out to be false, which of course it did.
To Rolling Stone's credit, they claim they reached out to Morgan Wallen representatives and the label for information or an interview with Wallen on the matter and have been blocked. However, this does not replace an obligation on a media company to verify information before making a defamatory claim against anyone. If an artist or label isn't ready to talk to you, try other ways. And if you can't verify the information, don't make the story public. You wait until you can.
When the Rolling Stone article was published claiming Morgan Wallen donated only $ 135,000, the CEO of Morgan Wallen's record label Big Loud contacted Rolling Stone and informed the point of sale that the label was in fact US 400.00 Wallen had only paid out dollars of the $ 500,000 promised by Morgan two months earlier, and the final $ 100,000 had been earmarked for further donations before the end of the year. This included a donation of $ 100,000 to an organization called Rock Against Racism, as well as $ 165,000 to the Black Music Action Coalition and $ 135,000 that was donated through the Entertainment Industry Foundation to be used by individuals at will to be distributed.
It's important to note here that Morgan Wallen made the $ 500,000 commitment less than two months before the Rolling Stone article was published. Given how US tax law works, the need to screen charities before making such large donations, and other accounting factors, these six-figure contributions can take some time to appear. Anyway, to say, "the money seems to be largely M.I.A." the title of your article, as Rolling Stone did, seems to be "extremely misleading" itself.
Saving Country Music reached out to Rock Against Racism to verify that Big Loud had indeed donated on behalf of Morgan Wallen. "We can confirm that Rock Against Racism has received a $ 100,000 donation from Big Loud," said Grayson Kirtland of the organization to Saving Country Music. "We are in the process of reviving the historic Rock Against Racism movement and Big Loud has offered a donation to support our efforts."
And of course, just as we've seen with other grossly misreported stories from Rolling Stone lately, the point of sale took advantage of the need to post corrections after it was found their coverage was incorrect to re-promote the item on social media to get the traffic to their wrong and irresponsible reporting all over again. And in this case, they made it worse and tried to discredit the legitimacy of the Rock Against Racism organization in their correction to save face, saying the charity was made up of "the managers of rock bands like Slipknot and Megadeth" and " The Rock Against Racism Instagram account contains a recent post that offers 'one last chance for a VIP trip to the Metal Tour of the Year'. "
It seems that the Rolling Stone has forgotten not only its journalistic integrity, but also its rock history. Rock Against Racism was founded in the UK in 1976 and has worked to bring fans of popular music together to renounce racism in the music industry and in the reggae, soul, rock & # 39; n & # 39; roll, jazz, funk and punk genres. It was formed in part after Eric Clapton made anti-immigrant statements. Rock Against Racism organized events and tours, but ceased operations around 1982. A new nonprofit, Rock Against Racism 501 (c) (3) aims to revive the movement, and Morgan Wallen's donation of $ 100,000 will go to the. viewed as a great help to this endeavor organization.
Saving Country Music also reached out to the Black Music Action Coalition and the Entertainment Industry Foundation to try to independently verify these donations as well, but received no feedback from either organization before this article was published. However, USA Today was able to obtain papers and confirm that the Big Loud label, on behalf of Morgan Wallen, was distributing $ 135,000 to several smaller charities of the individual's choosing, including the Young People's Chorus of New York City, which made children out has supported various cultural and economic areas through musical training, the Teen Dream Center, a Nashville Department for Downtown Youth, and the Beatrice W. Welters Breast Health Outreach & Navigation Program.
That means that $ 400,000 of the $ 500,000 pledge was actually distributed, with the final $ 100,000 being distributed in the coming months – much further north than the $ 165,000 Rolling Stone claimed Morgan Wallen to have donated.
But the bigger implications of this falsely reported Rolling Stone article are the ongoing journalistic misconduct in the once-venerable music agency and how they sow suspicion of the media among the public and violate the causes that the music agency purports to champion. Nobody is persuaded to disapprove of Morgan Wallen by the Rolling Stone article, who doesn't already like Morgan Wallen, while its fans believe that his punishment does not fit the crime and that he is the target of an agenda-driven media want to take advantage of the situation for clicks, will have more and guaranteed ammunition.
The Rolling Stone article doesn't blame Morgan Wallen, it makes Rolling Stone less responsible and trustworthy. Rolling Stone seems to believe that as long as they are on the right side of a problem, they can be on the wrong side of the facts, and corrections and controversy are just ways to get even more traffic to stories.
This seemed to be the same line of reasoning the outlet recently put forward when it falsely reported that Oklahoma hospitals were so overcrowded with patients overdosing ivermectin that there were no beds for gunshot victims. Even after the article was confirmed to be completely wrong, they refused to remove it, instead adding corrections to the original coverage that had no material basis and re-promoting the article on social media. The article remains live on Rolling Stone, as does Morgan Wallen's article.
Meanwhile, other media outlets including Vulture, NME, Complex, and Insider have falsely reported the Morgan Wallen story based on Rolling Stone's claims, much like other major news outlets have taken up the history of the Oklahoma hospital and further spread the misinformation.
Because these sensational headlines and stories are such lucrative traffic vectors, there is unfortunately no deterrent for Rolling Stone not to continue this "publish first, check later" strategy. Once praised for its left-wing perspective, a point of sale has now become one of the most vivacious capitalist organizations in all of the American media, with many of the point's “items” now consisting entirely of product recommendations with payouts through bounty programs.
The Morgan Wallen incident remains a black eye for country music and he should be held accountable for its actions. But a misrepresentation or outright lie about the situation will only fuel the backlash that Morgan Wallen has currently established as the most popular artist in country music.
