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.