Today, The New York Times ran a column in which television critic Alessandra Stanley tackled ABC's new drama How to Get Away With Murder. "Wrought in Their Creator's Image," said the headline, adding that Viola Davis "plays Shonda Rhimes' latest tough heroine."
The problem? Well, where to begin? For starters: Shonda Rhimes didn't actually create How to Get Away with Murder — she merely serves as an executive producer. The new series, in which Viola Davis plays a high-powered lawyer and professor, was actually created by Peter Nowalk, a white, male writer and producer who cut his teeth on Grey's Anatomy and Scandal (and who isn't mentioned at all until The New York Times story's 22nd paragraph). There, Stanley describes him as a "writer," while identifying Rhimes as the show's "marquee muse."
The New York Times story also begins with a sentence that is, at the very least, problematic: "When Shonda Rhimes writes her autobiography, it should be called 'How to Get Away With Being an Angry Black Woman.'"
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But Rhimes doesn't consider herself an "angry black woman." In a series of tweets, she attacked The New York Times for the many false assumptions in the story:
Stanley has long been dinged for inaccuracies in her TV columns. The New York Times has yet to comment on the uproar.
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