It’s as fascinating as it is frustrating to watch the media spin a story to suit its preferred narrative. For this week’s example, look no further than the controversy surrounding oral arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas, the latest affirmative action case to reach the Supreme Court of the United States.

An MSNBC reporter named Irin Carmon — who also co-authored a laudatory biography of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg entitled The Notorious RBG — seized on a question raised by Justice Antonin Scalia during oral arguments. The question dealt with the assertion (raised by one of the briefs) that promising students from poor or minority schools would generally be better served by attending good-but-non-prestigious colleges than elite schools through affirmative action. In other words, these students face a more daunting adjustment than either they or the colleges realize, which unnecessarily dooms them to failure at prestigious schools when they would likely have prospered at other schools. There has been legitimate research into this idea that dates back over a decade.

That context was absent from a tweet Carmon sent out, and the response via social media has been sadly predictable: