A Refugee Won over a Conservative German Town | Hacker News Reader

A Refugee Won over a Conservative German Town

nytimes.com

19 pointsflyaway1238 comments

https://web.archive.org/web/20230528090844/https://www.nytim...

As a heartwarming human interest story, this is fine. As a political story, this is subject to the objection "if all immigrants were like him, there would be no problem, but are all immigrants like him?"

The article also points out that he isn't a Muslim, making him atypical.

Per the stylebooks of the New York Times, Reuters, the Associated Press, and others [1], whether one is an immigrant or minority is only pertinent in heartwarming stories such as this. Quoting directly from the New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, 2015 Edition [2]:

race should be cited only when it is pertinent and its pertinence is clear to the reader. The race of a victim of a hate crime or the subject of a police search is clearly germane, an essential part of the person’s description. But the race of a person convicted of a crime is not pertinent unless the case has racial overtones; if it does, the overtones should be explained.

[1] https://sincerity.net/stylebooks/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times_Manual_of_S...

Your summary seems wrong. At least, I don't usually regard being "the subject of a police search" as a heartwarming topic.

The 1999 edition uses the same definition. https://archive.org/details/newyorktimesmanu00sieg_0/page/28...

The 1976 edition says (in the entry for "Negro"): "The race of a person figuring in the news should be specified only if it is truly pertinent. The same stricture applies to ethnic and religious identifications." - https://archive.org/details/newyorktimesmanu00jord/page/136/... . The entry for "race of a person in the news" is very similar - https://archive.org/details/newyorktimesmanu00jord/page/172/...

It's been about the same description for decades. So your point in bringing it up is .. what, exactly?

> Your summary seems wrong. At least, I don't usually regard being "the subject of a police search" as a heartwarming topic.

Let's say heartwarming or sympathetic, then. You are correct, just "heartwarming" doesn't cover all the stories where it is permitted to mention race.

> It's been about the same description for decades.

Correct. I did not mean to imply otherwise, the 2015 style guide just happens to be the only I have access to.

So your point in bringing it up is .. what, exactly?

That for the last 50 years race was only brought up in newspaper articles when it was "heartwarming or sympathetic"?

That's hardly believable.

You are correct - they frequently do not follow their style guides: https://freebeacon.com/media/yes-the-media-bury-the-race-of-...

You've got a massive axe to grind and I don't want to be your whetstone.

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