It's not worse - he's stating a fact, and your qualms with his descriptor (i.e. "the media") are secondary to the fact that his statement is an accurate description of 1) the problem and 2) the opponent in question, even if you feel like the secondary component is up for debate.
I'll restate my own adjacent thoughts: If you're a journalist and you are working at a company that performs these sorts of linguistic tricks to optimize for clicks... (and constantly for that matter) then you are equally responsible. Everyone has bills to pay, but everyone who participates has to eventually take responsibility for enabling a broken system.
Truthful descriptions of novel current events, even if they derive less clicks than clickbait, cannot become ancillary goals in the field of journalism. With no exceptions!
I’m sorry, what? Definitively no part of the headline is a lie, nor is any criticism of its factual nature even remotely sensible. “New exotic particle, a type of tetraquark” is completely valid when reduced to “new exotic particle, a tetraquark,” which notably does not say “new exotic particle, the tetraquark.” Collective noun usage, not singular. It’s terse but clear English, quite common in print, and a fantastically weak hill to die on. Watch:
“The junior double whopper, a cheeseburger, is implicated in the coronary event.”
I’d forgive it if it were confusing to someone who learned English as an additional language, not if it’s dishonestly called dishonest.
So no, they are not stating a fact. They’re mad at “the media,” an apparently singular organism, and they believe they’ve found an excuse to bore us all yapping about it for a minute but instead have misunderstood the English language. And you’re right there to back up the same tiresome hooey despite its demonstrably ignorant foundation.
If you’re going to call something a “linguistic trick” it is advisable to master the language, particularly if you’re going to write three paragraphs on the “dishonesty” of a well-written, economical headline about a pretty cool thing science figured out while you were obsessing over the nefarious motivations of people telling the world about it.
I'll restate my own adjacent thoughts: If you're a journalist and you are working at a company that performs these sorts of linguistic tricks to optimize for clicks... (and constantly for that matter) then you are equally responsible. Everyone has bills to pay, but everyone who participates has to eventually take responsibility for enabling a broken system.
Truthful descriptions of novel current events, even if they derive less clicks than clickbait, cannot become ancillary goals in the field of journalism. With no exceptions!