LogFAQs > #979259808

Sufferedphoenix posted...

I mean like just saying there was a conference held today and the speaker said this... and leaving it at that. Or saying the police apprehended a suspect of x crime and leaving it at that. Now days they try way harder to influence how you feel about it.

Again, genuinely factual information is a lot rarer than people like to think it is. Even if something's presented as being "just the facts," it's usually not *all* the facts, only the facts that the writer saw fit to include, which means a whole lot of curation has gone into the report. The push to be passive often also ends up (intentionally or otherwise) lending credence to a side of the story that really doesn't deserve it. Consider these two headlines, describing the same event:

-"Pedestrian killed after collision with vehicle in crosswalk with lights flashing"
-"Driver strikes and kills pedestrian in crosswalk with lights flashing"

Most would say the former is the correct way to frame it, being more "passive." Both state exactly the same factual information, but the standard is to use the former wording to avoid putting too much blame on the driver. The effect of that, however, is to paint the incident as being at least partially the pedestrian's fault, or otherwise some sort of inevitable accident that we just have to feel bad about and accept instead of blaming the negligence of the driver and infrastructure that fails to protect pedestrians from that negligence. It is, in fact, the driver's fault, but that "neutral" reporting avoids acknowledging that and leaves room to misinterpret the facts of the situation.