this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2024
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Can we stop saying “paid off” and start using “bribed”? The reality of the US is that bribery exists at every level and we just keep ignoring it or using euphemisms for it to fool ourselves and the world.
No, they genuinely can't. They can establish the fact that P&G paid them the money, but (good) journalists keep their content and titles limited to the bare facts only, and leave the implications to you to decide as a reader. Additionally, you always have to consider libel cases in journalism and the verbiage you write matters, because "bribe" infers intent that you may not be able to prove in court.
It is exceptionally obvious that this is a bribe to any reasonable person who reads it, and we should not outsource our responsibility to think critically and draw conclusions to journalists.
This is the reason why half of America is dumb as fuck.
Also, there’s something called journalist norms. If Reuters decides, for example, to start calling them bribes, everyone can start calling them bribes. It’s only libel if it’s not the norm to describe things that way. Same with calling them “lies”. “Non-truths” is such a stupid journalistic standard. They should have stuck with “lies” from the beginning.
Sorry, trying to understand here. Are you saying that reporting only the facts, without editorializing on the reasons behind it, is the reason why half of America is dumb as fuck? If so, I think you have that relationship entirely backwards. America being dumb as fuck is forcing/encouraging our news to spoonfeed more and more to the public, giving them power and as a consequence, whoever has control over those media institutions. You're asking for propaganda (without explicit intent to do so, which I recognize), and I'm not going to support that even if I agree with the underlying message of that propaganda.
"reporting all the facts" is an editorial decision as well. There's nothing stopping newspapers from reporting on statements by politicians and comparing those statements to the objective truth or facts within the same reporting. The only thing stopping them is all-sides-ism. I was going to say that fear of getting sued is also stopping them, but they actively do a lot of reporting that gets them sued or killed and they happily go on in the name of First Amendment and journalistic freedoms. So yeah, it's literally an editorial decision to report only on "blah said this!" instead of "blah said this, but the facts don't support it!"
As for spoonfeeding, sure that's always a bad idea. But there's always a fine line, isn't there?
Yes, there are various editorial decisions made, directly or inferred, in any article, but that's not the argument here. We're talking about the explicit editorial decision of calling this handover a "bribe". "Bribe" infers intent, which cannot be definitively proven without evidence that they don't have. It's insanely obvious to any reasonable party that the intent is there, but that is the line between spoonfeeding and reporting. They report on what they can prove, and any extrapolations will be left to you as the reader by any news agency that respects their reader in the slightest and isn't just trying to make you believe something. Anything else is propaganda or a tabloid, and I don't want to read it.
I don't think I can rebut your argument in "that fear of getting sued... freedoms" because I just do not think it is grounded in what actually happens, but not sure we can do much but just agree to disagree on that one. Fwiw, I think most reputable news agencies avoid this exact thing very consistently and always have tried to.
i can see the difference between a lie and a non-truth. Liars know that what they say is not true (Trump is a liar). Non-truth is when people honestly believe that the stupid shit coming out of their mouth is the truth (Maga people who parrot Trump are not liars, but what they say is not the truth either: hence the necessity for the term non-truth).
nitpick here but there already are terms for saying something that's not true (whether the speaker believes it or not) - one is "lie" and the other is "untruth". There was never the need to create a new word for it. I'm not saying language shouldn't progress. But in this case, coining a special term for jus Trump gave him too much power in our collective consciences than was necessary.
"lobbying"