We ran the wrong headline about Trump firing the FTC commissioners
FTC Commissioners Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya.On Tuesday, the president of the United States fired the Democratic commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission in clear contravention of what has been the law since 1935. News outlets aincluding The Verge a allwent up with their articles as fast as they could. The headlines and stories across the board were pretty similar; the blowback from readers was evenly distributed. aThis is wildly illegal,a one person wrote in The Washington Postas comment section. aJust say that. Donat say the fired people said it was illegal. Say it as the Washington Post when you know itas true. Democracy dies, thanks in part to this rag.a
We also caught flack for our own headline, which put aillegala in quotation marks, attributing it to the Democratic commissioners. a@theverge.com, y'all need a more accurate headline,a a reader told us on Bluesky. aThey're not SAYING they were illegally fired, they WERE illegally fired. The precedent set in Humphreyas Executor almost a century ago makes that crystal clear - but you don't address that until the next to last paragraph. DO BETTER!a
This is a pretty typical dynamic when the news hedges, equivocates, or neuters its lan …