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How the media write invective as opposed to reporting facts

How to write invective as opposed to reporting facts
Recently things got personal on Gerald Kushner  ‘his preppy aesthetic, sotto-voce style’, his ‘preference for backstage manoeuvring’, an ‘unfailing self-regard’ and the way ‘he quickly forms fixed opinions about people, sometimes based on scant evidence’ (no evidence was given for this opinion about Kushner’s opinions: no evidence and no source).

 ‘He also has a habit,’ unnamed sources (they are unnamed so therefore this gives the sources more credence is this not the journalistic confidence trick par excellence)were allowed to dictate once more, ‘of disappearing during crises.’


 In an essay on the flash journalism of the 1920s, H.L. Mencken observed:

There are times and occasions when rumour is almost as important as the truth – when a newspaper’s duty to its readers requires it to tell them not only what has happened, but also what is reported, what is threatened, what is merely said. What I contend is simply that such quasi-news, such half-baked and still dubious news, should be printed for exactly what it is – that it ought to be clearly differentiated from news that, by an overwhelming probability, is true.

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