The below clip from ABC Nighttime is a (mostly) balanced piece on controversial conservative pundit, columnist, and political commentator Ben Shapiro.
College campuses have, since the 1960s, been a hotbed of radical, left-wing student activism, but lately they have sunk to a level that the commentator, in a colossal understatement, describes as “an angry reflection of a divided country.”
Viewers who don’t know much about Shapiro will get some insight on his views on political correctness “run amok” on college campuses. The reporter allows Shapiro to defend himself against some liberal critics, which charge that Shapiro is homophobic or some other type of bigot. He has, for example, been slammed over his tendency to refer to trans people as “mentally ill.”
Shapiro counters these charges by doubling down and asserting that transgenders do suffer from a mental illness. The ABC editors at that point injected their quibbling, but technically correct, interpretation that “gender dysphoria” is not a mental illness. ABC neglected to point out that in a DSM-5 Update, the American Psychiatric Association changed “Gender Identification Disorder” to “gender dysphoria.”
DSM is an abbreviation for APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
So where gender dysphoria stands in the hierarchy of mental illness, mental disorders, or distress-causing phenomena muddies up the argument somewhat. Shapiro, nevertheless, believes that transgenders cannot change their biology.
So, ABC, not always known for its fair and balanced, accurate reporting, did pretty good job on their coverage of Shapiro. That may be in part because they were able to point out that Shapiro is not a fan of the so-called alt-right, and definitely does not like Donald Trump.
~ Liberty Planet
