[JumpCrisscross]

> portraying her as the victim

Could you cite where? I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm simply not seeing it.

The article readily admits "Ellison told Alameda employees in a video call that she knew FTX sent customer funds to Alameda, and that her company used the money to cover its liabilities." She is called out as Alameda's "sole leader." And it ends with a "quip Ellison made" about crypto being "mostly scams and memes when you get down to it."

Sure, Ellison is portrayed sympathetically at the start. But the conclusion is damning. And nowhere do I see her cast as a victim. We don't need to embargo empathy the moment someone commits a crime.

[SilasX]

You just repeated the framing yourself! “She was then ruined by crypto” — as if she’s some innocent victim. You’re just mystified at how it portrays her sympathetically, even as you buy the narrative hook, line, and sinker!

[JumpCrisscross]

> “She was then ruined by crypto” — as if she’s some innocent victim

I suppose we're reading nuance differently. Madoff was an accomplished financier and chair of the NYSE. His reputation was ruined by the Ponzi scheme. Sure, it's a passive voice. But that's far from exonerating.

Similar to how someone can ask why a murderer wound up murdering, identifying elements from their childhood, et cetera, that explain and maybe even make them sympathetic, all without exonerating them. (In that case, I would argue there is valid victimhood in the perpetrator's story. That doesn't make them less guilty. And I haven't seen any claims of victimhood in Ellison's case, as we did in e.g. Holmes's.)

[pxue]

I'll add an unsolicited neutral third party voice in here.

Bad settings make good people do bad things.

Crypto made her and sbf make many small dumb decisions which added up to a huge dumb decision.

[notch656a]

SBF between his own prior arbitrage wealth and his family's wealth was set for life as for as necessities. He could move to a single family home in Iowa, find a nice wife, raise kids, send them all to college and generally enjoy barbeques and reading books for the rest of his days if he liked. Without working further, or working for free for charities to create their crypto plugin to donate to feed the homeless or whatever genuinely altruistic goal.

He had the best setting imaginable but still managed to do bad things. Crypto "made" him do do bad things in the same way a deer gun makes one guy point it at a store clerk while others are just using it to feed his family some venison or wild hog.

[SilasX]

>Sure, it's a passive voice. But that's far from exonerating.

The accumulation of all those “not exonerating but friendly” pieces is what makes it a positive framing.

Something can be technically true but selected and framed to favor a false narrative. This is Journalism 101, or even high school English class, and you may have forgotten an important lesson from it.

[JumpCrisscross]

> accumulation of all those “not exonerating but friendly” pieces is what makes it a positive framing

This is not a friendly piece. There is nothing exonerating in it. And after some flattery it concedes her guilt.

The meta-story appears to be people trying to blame the media for another fraud in crypto.

[SilasX]

Hold on -- I didn't blame the media for this fraud. Did you just accept my point that a wording can suggest a narrative even without explicitly endorsing it?

You're almost there! Now look back at the title: "Ellison was bound for success. Then she got into crypto" and realize it's wrapped in an exonerating tone.

The title endorses a narrative. Yes, some sentences walk it back a little, but the bell was clearly rung. Again, the whole issue of framing is that you can do a lot via emphasis: put the damning stuff in footnotes and puff in the headlines.

[JumpCrisscross]

> title endorses a narrative

It endorses a timeline: she was promising, then she went into crypto and no longer is. That's accurate.

They could say she's a fraudster, but that's not really what this story is talking about. It's how she got to the point that she did fraud. (There are also questions of libel.)