Gwazis language was from the start negative and dismissing towards the entire thing. Not once does he address the content, but focused on the title and went "you should read the bill". By which he plants the assumption that people who are alarmed and discussing it haven't. He did not add to the conversation by posting a raw link to it, he just made dismissive statement. This kind of internet rhetoric is extremely common on the internet and it is getting on my nerves.
And then it turns out he is the one who didn't read the article, making his little post all the more damning. I know full well what he mean. He avoid to actually address the bill but find it important to try and attack "Fear mongering" without reading the context. Which, again, is a harmful and damaging stance to take. It does no good but cast doubt on something you haven't even read and the credentials of a person you never before encountered. This is a trend that among others, the Alt-Right have made into a tactic to attack journalists. The actual, trained and studying, researching, factual journalists. SO I am calling him out on it.
Either he works on contextual comprehension and sharpens his rethoric where this is not a issue. Or people like me will find it fit to call him out. Discussion is important. And we have let the discourse be to stagnant and overtaken by quacks like "Sargon of Akkard" and "Factual Feminist" who provide agressively slanted views with cherry picked statistics and little understanding to their contextual value. We have allowed the Alt-right and all the "Youtube Liberals" to blame everything on "Political Correctness" and "Media Manipulation" when we actually find out they are shock full of racism and sexism. The Right has always favored the tactic of accusing others for problems they cause. They did it with obama. They will do so with whoever takes over after Trumps mess. They deflect, (Much like trump does), by flinnging shit at people who criticize them. They complain about safespaces and thin skin, claiming free speech is sacred. Yet when critized, when challenged on their views, they will shout you down. They will make their own "safe spaces" where anyone who fundamentally disagree or call them for what they are, are pushed out.
Trump did one good thing. He shoved Leftists everywhere it is time to stop being complacent.
Note. I did not just call Gwazi alt-right, or a "Youtube Liberal". But He does like to blame things on political correctness, he did with this election.
All I'm saying is that Gwazi made a general statement about something that is good practice to do when reading news articles about proposed bills, and that it was interpreted as being a comment about this bill in particular, which I don't think is what he meant.
Using the term "fear-mongering"
can mean dismissing something as a non-issue, when it's said in response to something specific. Gwazi was only referring to the fact that the title of the news article was negatively-spun, and that it's good to read the bill itself and form an opinion off of it that way, than to let a journalist's opinion of something color
your opinion before you even know what the bill is. That doesn't mean that the journalist in question is unqualified to have an opinion -- it only means that it's better to form your own opinion by first reading the bill, and
then giving a journalist's interpretation of it a fair hearing.
And, yes, there are times when news journalists mis-represent a bill or leave out important details that could change one's view of it. Hence why reading the actual bill is, in general, a good practice to be in the habit of. That might not have happened
here, but, again, Gwazi was only giving general advice.
I agree that perhaps it would've been wise of him to read the article first -- especially since the article
does link to the actual bill, like you said -- but I still think that Gwazi hasn't done much harm in stating general advice, and I think you might be over-reacting a bit in calling him dismissive and all that.
Besides, how is it dismissive to suggest that people read the actual bill? All that does is open up discussion
centered around the bill itself rather than an article about it. Gwazi offered a suggestion to make our discussions about it more productive by focusing on the facts at hand, rather than allowing our judgement to be clouded by an already negatively-framed article. But that doesn't mean that we can't still interpret the bill itself as being a bad thing. I know you said that reading the actual bill isn't all that necessary
in this particular case, given that the article does a good job of summarizing it -- but, at worst, that just means that Gwazi's suggestion is just sort of... neutral, not really helping or harming anything. I certainly don't see it as dismissive, though.
Again, I think this is all just a misunderstanding. I understand why throwing around the term "fear-mongering" can be seen as dismissive in a lot of contexts, so I can understand why you interpreted it as such. But I don't think that's what Gwazi was trying to do. And I think he was trying to make a general statement that was interpreted as something more specific, which I think is where a lot of the problem here lies.