Talk:Stephanie Rawlings-Blake

Comment

Am I allowed to use the picture of Stephanie Rawlings Blake from this website? She is an elected public official. I read for about an hour about the fair use of images, but could not decide if this constituted fair use.

http://www.msa.md.gov/msa/mdmanual/36loc/bcity/leg/html/msa14500.html

Your help is appreciated.

I don't believe it's considered fair use. Photos taken by federal govt. employees in the course of their jobs are considered to be in the public domain, but this doesn't apply to state or local governments. --Jfruh (talk) 19:45, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Rawlings Blake or Rawlings-Blake?

Does anyone have a definitive answer as to whether Stephanie uses a hyphen in her last name? There's a hyphen in the Baltimore City Council page but not in the Maryland state govt. page; the website of a local news station used no hyphen last year but a hyphen this year. Her campaign website seems to use the hyphen throughout, so maybe we should switch? --Jfruh (talk) 19:44, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

BRA-REVEALING Pic of Mayor Rawlings-Blake

Can't we get a better picture of the mayor? Say, one that does not involve a missing button on her blouse revealing her BRA? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.244.92.60 (talk) 17:26, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

We would certainly welcome anyone with such a picture to donate it. Do you have one perhaps? DMacks (talk) 06:05, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 29 April 2015

In the Mayor of Baltimore section, the phrase "as interpreted by some conservative-leaning news sources" reeks of Baltimore Mayor's Office going into spin mode. Wikipedia is no place for political spin from either party and much of this paragraph needs to be re-written. 184.21.241.223 (talk) 04:49, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. Amortias (T)(C) 08:01, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia has an unfortunate history of leaning to the Left. Like many others, I'd prefer it to be strictly neutral ideologically. Obviously, given current events, pretty much everything about this mayor would be changed unless it was written from the standpoint of spin control by the mayor and her supporters. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.49.20.187 (talk) 14:48, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

The changes that should be made are that "conservative leaning" should be removed. The citations listed as references don't say that conservative leaning websites said that, they are direct citations from Fox News, Daily Caller and Newsmax. It is the person who wrote that phrase that is characterizing the outlets as conservative leaning not the references. I have never seen a similar "liberal leaning" comment when referencing the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN et al. That you do not understand the bias that people see shows your inherent bias.Scottca075 (talk) 21:14, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

@Scottca075: The article is no longer protected. You are able to edit it. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 21:26, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Line about "Rawlings-Blake subsequently denied having made the statement" based on twisting one source's text

There's a user that is repeatedly attempting to add "Rawlings-Blake subsequently denied having made the statement" in reference to the controversial statement the mayor made in a press conference saying that while space was given to protesters to protest, inadvertantly, that action created a space in which those who wished to destroy did so. Because that line in her speech attracted considerable attention from the mayor's critics and those who wished to make her look bad, I felt it was important enough to start a discussion here rather than edit-war via edit summaries. I'll assume, for the moment, that Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) is making these edits in good faith, rather than trying to introduce a non-NPOV sentence into the article, as there has been a lot of coverage from opinion-based media slamming the mayor and he may have been influenced by that.

I see two problems with the line "Rawlings-Blake subsequently denied having made the statement" and the reference provided. #1, there's no first-hand denial in existence for the mayor saying "I didn't make that statement." The word "denied" is used in this single Fox News article, and even within this same article, there's no quote of the mayor denying making the statement that we have in this article in its entirety. This makes sense, as it would be foolish for anyone to deny making a statement that they knew was being broadcast on live TV on multiple national news networks. What the mayor did say was "I never said nor would I ever say that we are giving people space to destroy our city, so my words should not be twisted," the mayor said Monday."

If you're not familiar with the situation, what the mayor is reacting to there is the out-of-context mischaracterization of her initial statement - the phrase "we also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well" was used by (mostly) right-wing news sources (see above) to claim that she had given implicit permission for rioters to riot. Her "denial", clearly, is the denial of the idea that she ever gave such permission to anyone.

Thus, adding the line "Rawlings-Blake subsequently denied having made the statement" to this article is a clear violation of Wikipedia's NPOV policy, as it makes it seem as though the mayor was denying that she made a statement seen by millions live and posted online for anyone to see, when in reality, it's clear she was disavowing the claim that she had told rioters "go riot!" The cited source itself actually says

"As her "destroy" remarks faced a buzzsaw of criticism amid the riots Monday, the mayor initially tried to deny she said them. "I never said nor would I ever say that we are giving people space to destroy our city, so my words should not be twisted," the mayor said Monday.

While the word "deny" is used in this quote, the full context is quote clearly different from saying "Rawlings-Blake subsequently denied having made the statement". Thus, at best this is a misleading line; at worst, it's an attempt to inject an opinion into the article by someone who has a negative view of the mayor. I'm hoping it's the former.

My second problem is using that cited source in the first place. While it is published from an established news source, there's no author associated with the article. That by itself doesn't make the source unreliable, but if you look at WP:RELIABLE, you'll see that "we publish the opinions only of reliable authors, and not the opinions of Wikipedians who have read and interpreted primary source material for themselves." In this case, there's no author, and the word "deny" in the article is a characterization of the mayor's remarks, not a statement of fact, and as such, that part of the article may not be considered having come from a reliable source - since we don't know the source of the opinion.

For these reasons, I'm removing the line from the article for now. Rockypedia (talk) 12:52, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

References

Reads like a biography / resume

Much of this article reads like a resume / biography; and the content is far from notable for inclusion. I have removed content relating to naming a BLP minor, and a non-notable relative death from a tabloid-style newspaper in the section: Personal life. There is further content that really does not belong in this article and should be scrubbed / cleaned to slim-line the subject's notability; which is minimal for inclusion at WP. Maineartists (talk) 23:05, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Stephanie Rawlings Blake

Where is she now...was leaving the Mayor's position her decision or something based on something she was involved in. Salvesg (talk) 01:12, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Saw her commenting on current affairs in a panel at BBC World News yesterday, one of the topics being the future financing of the BBC. I think she will be a recurrent pundit there for some time. And she had really made an effort *not* to look black - glowing blonde/burnished hair all done up, and her skin also looking a lot more white than in the photos for this aticle. 188.150.64.57 (talk) 17:55, 18 January 2022 (UTC)