A Few More Lies

I became annoyed during my personal news gathering this morning -- you know, box scores, local weather, headlines, 1st paragraph if it interests me, inside pages if it really interests me, (okay, 'fess up, all of it, if it titillates...)
Well, I will often seek out more in depth coverage of something I heard on the news (or Colbert or Stewart,) the night before, check to see differences in coverage of partisan issues, notice MSM vs. Catholic media, vs my own vs. blogosphere assessment of the importance of certain news.
So I catch a more complete account of the House Oversight Committee's hearings, whihc are revealing an appalling degree of politicization of various matters of science and health in the executive branch. The story I caught last night said today's hearings brought out that in the Clinton and Bush administrations the Surgeons General had been pressured to change or suppress statements.
Well, yes and no.
Nothing un-factual there, but the presentation of the facts is so misleading as to constitute a lie.
Lying with the Truth.
Further reading seemed to indicate to me that Surgeons going back as far as the Reagan administration say they have all been so pressured, and they all agree that what happened under the current Bush administration is all out of proportion with what they experienced.
So why did the TV news I watched report it that other way? Did that seem more "fair and balanced" because they named on Republican and one Democratic presidential administration? That made it even-handed in someone's eyes??!?@?#??
How foolish is that?
One might as well report of another incident of which I just read, "both parties to the fight sustained injuries."
This would be true, although it paints a rather inaccurate impression of a beating in which one man was pummeled into a coma and the other walked aways with a broken hand.

Now, we were all kids once -- we all know, and I daresay, have all taken advantage of the fact that you can lie to your Mom without straying from the truth:

Why is your brother crying, did you hit him?
No, Mom, honest! (You didn't ask if I kicked him...)

But shouldn't we expect more of new outlets than of 6 year olds?

All this leads back to my reading about SUMMORUM PONTIFICUM.... CNN, via Reuters came up with this boner:
The decree met with mixed reaction from Catholics, ranging from concern among liberal lay groups to a wary welcome from schismatic traditionalists.
Really? Reaction "ranged" from wariness to concern? To steal from an old theatre critic, they ran the gamut from A to B?
Thereby it is implied that nobody was really happy with it, nobody liked it...
Which is a lie.

Or this:
One prominent Jewish leader criticized the revival of a prayer for the conversion of Jews, saying the old text was "insensitive ... insulting" and said it could set back the progress of reconciliation between Catholics and Jews.
Well, yes he did do this -- but wouldn't you think as a news gathering organization you'd have some sort of obligation to dig in a little and find out if he was CORRECT? or if, instead he was referring to a prayer that no, is no longer part of the rite.
Goebbles, Big Brother, presidential press secretaries, CNN and me pounding on younger siblings -- we all knew how to tell lies with facts.

But I'd like to think I grew up...