I’m reasonably sure that Reuters is the second most irritating news network, at least.  I’m not sure whether it ties, beats, or loses to the Associated Press.  And their writing style, and what it attempts to imply, is what bugs me most. (It’s worth noting that the AP and several other news services are just as guilty of what I discuss here)

Let’s consider J. Random Example 1.  I suggest opening this link in Firefox or Safari.  Search for “.”; in Firefox hit “Highlight all,” and I think Safari highlights by default these days.  What you will notice in J. Random Example is that this 17 paragraph article contains 25 sentences.  In an astonishing achievement for their writers, one paragraph even has three of them.

The point of this writing style is that it sounds free of analysis or opinion.  When you’re just stating facts one sentence at a time, you don’t have room to express opinion or bias, right?

But wait; let’s look at some of the imagery here.  How do they descibe the recession/economy: accelerating, soaring, overwhelming, relentless.  What they’re implying: the recession is an unstoppable, sentient thing.  There is talk of the human toll, which summons images of plagues and wars; jobs are slashed, the drop in employment is “sharp,” and industries, already “weak,” are being “bled.”  28% of the sentences in the article contain the word “cut”, its plural or its active verb form. This is the language of violence, and it is being inflicted on us and our buddies, Industry. Remember? They’re the family down the block that pays everyone and hosts the church bake sales.  And that Walmart guy, with his glowing smiles and warm hugs! How much longer can they/we stay alive?  Manufacturing is “sinking,” the “crisis” is “deepening,” the situation is “deteriorating.” We’re “falling into oblivion, and it will only get worse,” the outlook is “grim”; there is “no sign of relief.”

Wow, this is like Lord of the Rings! Specifically, the battle of Helm’s Deep. We’re the frightened women and children of Rohan, powerless and hiding in the caves; industry are the vastly outnumbered soldiers pitted against the seething orc-horde of insufficient credit and our only hope will be the timely arrival off Obama the White and the Rohirrim of tax dollars.

Yeah, there’s some unbiased reporting.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 6th, 2009 at 2:04 pm and is filed under Politics, Smart-Sounding Babble. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.