Kansas City Star Turns Tabloid Trope With Teen Shooting Family Hearsay

To be fair . . . The quotes are weak sauce with a great deal qualifiers and mostly seem like classic generational humor that's befitting of lame SNL sketch. 

But more importantly . . . 

SECOND-HAND APPROXIMATIONS ABOUT CONTROVERSIAL OPINIONS ISN'T JOURNALISM AND IT'S NOT FAIR!!!

Again . . . 

The Kansas City Star is working to reinforce a narrative about that ALLEGED racism of some old school dude rather than simply reporting the facts of this case. 

What's worse is that this is a tactic that even most mainstream newspapers won't touch . . . Sure, there might be a public interest about some guy selling out his grandpa but even the words offered don't seem that telling.

Take a look . . .

(Klint) Ludwig said he and his grandfather, who goes by the first name Dan, used to be very close.

“But in the last five or six years or so, I feel like we’ve lost touch,” he said. “I’ve gotten older and gained my own political views, and he’s become staunchly right-wing, further down the right-wing rabbit hole as far as doing the election-denying conspiracy stuff and COVID conspiracies and disinformation, fully buying into the Fox News, OAN kind of line. I feel like it’s really further radicalized him in a lot of ways.”

Ludwig said his grandfather had been immersed in “a 24-hour news cycle of fear and paranoia.”

“And then the NRA pushing the ‘stand your ground’ stuff and that you have to defend your home,” he said. “When I heard what happened, I was appalled and shocked that it transpired, but I didn’t disbelieve that it was true. The second I heard it, I was like, ‘Yeah, I could see him doing that.’”

Does he consider his grandfather a racist?

“I believe that there have been some positions that he’s held that have been bigoted or sort of disparaging,” Ludwig said. “But it’s stock Fox News, conservative American stuff. It’s ‘anybody who gets an abortion is a murderer.’ And ‘fatherless Black families are the reason why crime exists in this country.’ It’s stuff everybody’s heard at the Thanksgiving table every year.”

Ludwig said his grandfather’s paranoia had accelerated in the past couple of years.

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com link . . .

'Fear and paranoia.' Grandson says Andrew Lester bought into conspiracies, disinformation

A grandson of the man charged with shooting a Black teen in Kansas City's Northland last week said he was "appalled" and "disgusted" at his grandfather's actions and is thankful Ralph Yarl is recovering. "I was horrified. I thought it was terrible," Klint Ludwig said of his immediate reaction to hearing about the shooting of the 16-year-old.