Sunday, May 01, 2005

Hidden Text

Volokh is frothing at the mouth that the LA Times cut out "KEY data" from a story it reproduced from Reuters. Damn that liberal media for trying to pull a fast one, damn them to hell. Thank god self-righteous bloggers are on the job setting things straight. FINALLY, and I mean finally, after nearly a century of omissions and edits to wire news reports the papers will know, "Not anymore Bucko." Frankly, since the papers are constraing by such things as word limits, space, ads, etc. I think they should just leave the enterprise and let amateur gumshoe bloggers report the news.

Putting the sardonic bloviating aside for a second, Volokh's beef (much like his beef with Bushisms) seems to be a non-issue. The omission is a "KEY" fact if you're mindset is to give the best account favorable to the U.S. military possible. The LA Times included the Italian claim that they were driving slwo when fired upon, and the American claim that they were speeding. It omits a reference to a CBS report that a satelite recorded the speed of the car at 60 mph.

1. A report by another news agency....HMMMMMMMMMM!!! Not like bloggers conveniently omit things.

2. There's doubt about the claim in other reports. Which leads to three...

3. Volokh wants the times to run the claim anyway, but if possible run a caveat about it, this of course leads to four...

4. If the omission, AND NO ONE HAS SUGGESTED ANYTHING TO DOUBT THIS, was due to space considerations, how the hell can you logically argue that it should have been run anyway with ADDITIONAL reporting about its possible falsity. In five...

5. We learn that talk is cheap. And so I propose the following exercise. In 300 words or less (the story is at 304, but you all are not the LA Times, so I'm sure you can do better), please rewrite the story to include whatever you think are the key facts that you want others to know.

6. Happy outlining.

Labels: ,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home