[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.)

[SilasX]

>> title endorses a narrative

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

You seem to be almost deliberately missing the point that the facts can be correct but presented to favor a false narrative. I've said that three times now, and yet you keep re-asserting that the facts are technically correct, as if that's some vindication of your point.

If that's genuinely what you believe, I'm happy to tell your co-workers that you "managed to not come to work drunk today". It's accurate, right?

[JumpCrisscross]

> It's accurate, right?

No, because it carries a false implication. I'm failing to see that here for anyone who hasn't come to their conclusion ex ante. There seems to be a generalized dislike for anyone covering anything related to FTX without screaming that it was a fraud. We know it was a fraud. The people who don't think it's a fraud will never be convinced otherwise.