Was the murderer a socialist? Can a high school student possibly use that word correctly?

A point that a commenter made on my post yesterday about the Denver Post’s bias was so important that it deserves its own post.

Commenter FR writes:

The Denver Post article originally quoted one of his classmates describing him as “a very opinionated Socialist.”

They have now scrubbed (memory-holed) this quote. An editor of the DP is on twitter now trying to defend themselves, saying that a mere student wouldn’t be knowledgeable enough to understand this term.

I checked out FR’s story. It turns out that the Denver Post did indeed quote a high school student calling murderer Karl Pierson “a very opinionated Socialist.” That quote was later removed. I have not been able to find the editor on Twitter defending this edit on the grounds that a student wouldn’t know what the word “socialism” means. I can certainly believe that an editor would say that. What other grounds would there be for removing such a quote other than that the student, Thomas Conrad, lacked understanding?

But here’s what else is interesting. So what? News reporter are now supposed to remove actual quotes because the people quoted don’t understand what they said? I doubt that the Denver Post applies that “principle” consistently.