The original assumption that some group G is being implicitly blamed may seem weird, but at least on social media, it seems like a lot of complaining about things happens with the primary goal of blaming someone, so I think it’s not crazy that some people would assume this.
I agree though a) often “blaming someone” (or at least a group/institution) is on the route to trying to get if fixed, especially for quite narrow asks like “your headline sucks” and b) if your problem is with slacktivism writ large I don’t think telling people they misidentified the subgroup within an institution that gets something wrong is likely to be persuasive that people should stop doing slacktivism.
Concretely, if I complain about a headline in the New York Times and tag them on Twitter, the predictable effects include a) decreasing the NYT’s status a little among my readers, b) if enough people raise a fuss/the right people see the complaints, the specific headline might get fixed, and c) optimistically, if even more people raise a fuss and the right people see such complaints with enough regularity, the NYT might change their headlines policy going forwards.
Maybe you think this is useless. But a) I think you’re empirically wrong about headlines at least sometimes, and b) I don’t think “the writers aren’t responsible for headlines” is a satisfying explanation for why it’s useless!
Similarly, writing about why a pandemic action is bad is one of the ways a journalist/quasi-public figure like Kelsey has to effect change. Maybe it’s worse than (eg) a white paper with step-by-step analysis of how each specific institution, and each team within an organization, could act differently, but I’m not sure that’s true[1]. Besides, the latter is a much higher bar!
I agree though a) often “blaming someone” (or at least a group/institution) is on the route to trying to get if fixed, especially for quite narrow asks like “your headline sucks” and b) if your problem is with slacktivism writ large I don’t think telling people they misidentified the subgroup within an institution that gets something wrong is likely to be persuasive that people should stop doing slacktivism.
Concretely, if I complain about a headline in the New York Times and tag them on Twitter, the predictable effects include a) decreasing the NYT’s status a little among my readers, b) if enough people raise a fuss/the right people see the complaints, the specific headline might get fixed, and c) optimistically, if even more people raise a fuss and the right people see such complaints with enough regularity, the NYT might change their headlines policy going forwards.
Maybe you think this is useless. But a) I think you’re empirically wrong about headlines at least sometimes, and b) I don’t think “the writers aren’t responsible for headlines” is a satisfying explanation for why it’s useless!
Similarly, writing about why a pandemic action is bad is one of the ways a journalist/quasi-public figure like Kelsey has to effect change. Maybe it’s worse than (eg) a white paper with step-by-step analysis of how each specific institution, and each team within an organization, could act differently, but I’m not sure that’s true[1]. Besides, the latter is a much higher bar!
From the outside, it’s easier to see how something is a problem than the specific steps necessary to fix it!