One of the (many) things that give me pause when the highly paid morons prattle on is their use of “will” and similar words that are supposed to convince this old newspaper reporter and editor that something slated to happen will occur as they predict.
ARE THEY LITTLE GODS or vaticinators? Clairvoyants?
The President WILL announce his SCOTUS candidate.
The boys WILL be brought out of the tunnel this time tomorrow.
Are they prescient that they can see into the future?
How do they know that what they so confidently tell me “will” happen will indeed happen, and at the time and place of their – or their writers’ – prediction?
There are plenty of “weasel words” that may be used to CYAssets if the expected event fails to materialize.
The President is expected to announce his SCOTUS candidate at 9 p.m.
If it doesn’t happen – what if North Korea decides to fire a missile toward the U.S. and the President – as the Constitution demands – dons his Commander in Chief hat and is too busy to make the SCOTUS announcement?
What if the space ship that “will carry a payload to Jupiter” blows up on the pad?
Something is scheduled to happen. Perhaps slated or even predicted.
Rather than will how about may or should or even is expected.
Perhaps these talking heads – or their writers – have crystal balls, ouija boards, or tarot cards tucked away off camera.
I doubt the talking heads (and their writers) are “just lazy.” I think they simply are ignorant. Their vocabulary often is little more than that of a fourth grader (I’m in mind of the “Are you smarter than a fifth grader” tv show).
Perhaps because what is said on air is so quickly forgotten there is little worry that someone – some curmudgeon – will call them on their faux pas. Unlike print where the error can be read for days and come back to haunt the writer and editor.
Maybe not.
The level of newspaper production – from news gathering to newspaper composition – seems to have fallen to a level that, were I still in the business, I probably would quit in disgust.
There ARE good reporters and there ARE good editors, and I’m sure there are a few cold type page compositors who take prided in their work, but they seem to be few and far between. They are as rare as the proverbial hen’s teeth in the electronic media.
When I was a newspaper printer I worked my way from a lowly job (bank boy) to stoneman.
Before my first reporting job I asked a very experienced rewrite man what I needed to be a good reporter: spell the person’s name correctly and keep the leedcq to 10 words or less, I was told.
I don’t expect tv talking heads to be Bill Buckleys or Hubert Humphreys – although they could at least aspire to their erudition.
Where are Ralph Renick and Edward R. Morrow when you need them.
PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.
Truth is an absolute defense to defamation. Defamation is a false statement of fact. If the statement was accurate, then by definition it wasn’t defamatory.
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