A columnist is not a reporter. A columnist isn't even a journalist.

[vakkotaur]

In the late twentieth century, a new corporate philosophy to all but blow the shareholders had ravaged newspapers and TV stations, bleeding off staffing, experience and standards until what was left of the profession was a karaoke rendition of itself. The Old Guard of journalism came to the rescue by increasing the number of awards and self-congratulatory fetes until journalism officially passed bowling for most trophies per calorie burned.

-- Tim Dorsey in Hammerhead Ranch Motel

Remember that when the media screws up something you know about, that it treats everything else with just as much accuracy. Background left out is a lie of omission and is just as much a lie as an included fabrication.

Howie Carr in Caution: Hunters at work (Human season arrives with a bang) makes at least lie of omission. In his anti-hunting diatribe he says, "Wisconsin: A grandfather mistook his 18-year-old grandson for a deer and blasted him to kingdom come in Saxeville a week ago today." Sounds terrible, and it is. And if that's all there was to it, it would say something only about the grandfather. What was omitted was that the grandson showed poor judgment as he covered his blaze orange hunting clothes with a brown and white jacket blanket. That's a bit different. It does not excuse the event, as the grandfather certainly should have had a definite view and an absolute certainty that he was, in fact, aiming at a deer. It does however explain things a bit. After all, the thing going through the reader's mind is likely, "Only an idiot would mistake a hunter (wearing blaze orange) for a deer." The blaze orange had been covered by something that was the color(s) of a deer. Was the grandfather wrong to pull the trigger in the circumstances? Absolutely! But the actions of the grandson were a contributing factor. That went unsaid.

Are there idiot hunters? Yes. Too many of them, as even one idiot hunter is one too many. But one idiot columnist is also one too many. If he left out that "little detail" I can only wonder what else he left out or plain got wrong.

Full disclosure: I do not hunt. I have relatives that do or did. I have killed a deer. I killed a Ford (that was really a Kia) at the same time.

Comments

[thecanuckguy.livejournal.com]

I never 100% trust a media story, I've known too many cases of this where the journalist (even a journalist, not a columnist) doesn't do their whole homework, and wants to say what they want to say in the end (after all, isn't that why nearly every paper in North America is labelled with a left or right wing bias?)

For example this reply on the recent post where I was interviewed in the paper. Being the interviewee, I had the rare opportunity to know what the source material was before the article was written (the casual reader of the paper doesn't get that chance), and I noticed right away how some things differed from what I actually said, how words were put in my mouth, and others had their meaning twisted, and this was just an innocent article on my hobby, nothing major! Don't get me wrong, overall I liked the article and think it was a good thing it was printed, but the more I read it (especially since someone at work put up a copy in the breakroom, so I have a hard time avoiding it) the more I get upset that a certain phrase is (or isn't) in there, giving the completely wrong impression from what I wanted.

(Of course, I can also say the words "Vanity Fair" to you and you'll know how articles are written the way the columnist wants them to be written, not how the facts were to give an unbiased view.)

[haystack.livejournal.com]

More chillingly, the same thing can be done with photography and video. The person behind the camera chooses exactly what he or she wants you to see, perhaps leaving out key elements of the scene, elements that might work against the message being pushed on the viewer. No editing is even required; all it takes is framing the shots in the right way.

With Photoshop, any perversion of reality can be brought to fruition. Seeing used to be believing, but now I'm not so sure. Heck, even before Photoshop, there were all sorts of darkroom tricks that could be used to alter photographic images.

This story you tell about the omitted jacket really grinds my gears. I don't have any love for hunting (in fact, I've been narrowly missed by a hunter's gunfire) but that there is some serious BS on the columnist's part.

[thecanuckguy.livejournal.com]

I've been narrowly missed by a hunter's gunfire

Well no kidding! A giant raccoon walking around, I'd say that was an accident just waiting to happen!

[haystack.livejournal.com]

I know! These days I make sure to turn on the Blaze Orange color scheme before I go padding around in the fall leaves! Back then, well, I was stuck in black-and-white-and-in-betweens...