It turns out the doctor dragged off a United plane at O’Hare has not only a past, but an inconvenient past. It’s a sleeping-dog past that journalists ought to let lie—at least that’s the contention made by David Uberti of the Columbia Journalism Review. And he’s far from the only person critical of the media that woke this particular dog. “Stories About United Passenger’s ‘Troubled’ Past Prompt Massive Backlash,” reads one headline on the Wrap. “United and the media are trying to justify . . . their racist anti-Asian male beating,” wrote an online commenter.
Here’s Uberti’s description of what, specifically, he objected to:
But Dao was a name in the news once before because of a scandal that was of his making. What are we being asked to conclude? That the past must to be kept out of news stories whenever it threatens to introduce a note of moral ambiguity? Or, is it simply that the media need to cherry-pick those biographical details that reinforce the current narrative and bury all the others?
