Universalis, your very own breviary in pixels...

Tuesday 9 June 2015

All the Hypotheses That're Fit To Hypothesize

I've been thinking lately how often, as I read or listen to "news" that something is being reported which I realize I know, for a moral certainty, is untrue.
And how often, as the 24/7 news machine rushes desperately to report something, anything something is reported as fact and later retracted, (or perhaps not retracted, perhaps just later ignored and contradicted.)
And how often something is presented as "news" that is really headline.

Rebecca Hamilton has a fair story in which she reports on the New York Times reporting said story.

She doesn't mention, (she may not have seen,) the editorializing that went on in the Time's original headline to the story, since removed, which said that a court ruling "imperiled" abortion.
Court Upholds Texas Measures That Imperil Abortion Clinics
"Imperiled."

Vaccines are not said to "imperil" virus, are they?

Our armed forces would never be described as likely to "imperil" our foes by the paper, would they?

Newly created jobs don't "imperil" unemployment, right?

Nope.
No way can a single word the Times is liable to say about human life be taken to be objective.

No comments: