and just like how said movies come up with bullshit in-universe terms to refer to the same phenomena (walkers, infected, ridden etc), the new york times refers to its own consent manufactured as "discussion" and "public discourse"
It's astonishingly cowardly. It was an editorial decision to relentlessly pursue this topic, putting every bad faith reactionary's grievances into a new story, day in and day out. Like they have done in the past with crime statistics, the editorial board deliberately created issue salience
... out of something that had no impact on the lives of the vast majority of their readers. A genteel form of concern trolling that kept their hands *technically* clean even if the intent was obvious
And whenever they get pushback on it they do the whole “we’re just a little smol newspaper that has no agency and can’t direct discourse” routine that’s just blatantly false
The funniest lampshade of this is THE DEAD DON’T DIE, where the chief of police is like, what do we think is going on here? And Kyle Ren is like, “Zombies.”
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https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/world/from-the-editors-the-times-and-iraq.html