Stop it with 'sound bites'

You almost hate to say it, given how well the AP has done over the past few years at calling out lies and bullshit without turning the process into a production number, but -- cut it out, you guys. Look. There are plenty of people who seem to think the point of a congressional hearing is "crisp sound bites." Your job is to ignore those people and deliver the mail. If the sound bites on offer didn't spell things out unambiguously enough for you, let me suggest you ignore the "crisp" ones and concentrate on the unambiguous ones.

Only one of these things can be true

How many guns, Local Daily Paper?

ARLINGTON, Virginia – Former U.S. Rep. John Dingell of Dearborn, the longest-serving member of Congress in its history, was laid to rest on Friday at Arlington National Cemetery, in a military ceremony that included a 21-gun salute. 

Hmm. How many guns, Other Local Daily Paper?

Since nobody seems to have cranky copy editors who remember these things around any more, you can actually look them up:

The elements of military funeral honors include:

• A casket team (body bearers / pall bearers)
• A firing party
• A bugler
• Folding of and Presentation of our National Colors

... Officers in the rank of colonel and above in the Army and the Marine Corps may be provided a caparisoned (riderless) horse, if available. General/flag officers of the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard may receive a cannon salute (17 guns for a four-star general, 15 for a three-star, 13 for a two-star, 11 for a one-star), if available. Minute Guns may be used for general officers/flag officers of the Navy, Coast Guard and Marine Corps. The President of the United States is entitled to a 21-gun salute, while other high state officials receive 19 guns. The cemetery staff will make arrangements for military funeral honors when requested by the next of kin. A military chaplain may also be requested. 

Which paper do you think got it right?

Not to linger too long here, but there's also the small matter of the cutlines. Here's the Freep (print):

Rep. Debbie Dingell, wife of former Congressman John D. Dingell, reacts along with Jim Dingell, brother of the iconic lawmaker, right, during the burial service with honors at Arlington National Cemetery.

And the News (online):

Army Lt. Col. Allen Kehoe of the Old Guard presents the flag from the casket of former Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., to his wife, Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., during burial services at Arlington National Cemetery on Friday, Feb. 15, 2019 in Arlington, Va. To Debbie Dingell's right are John Dingell's younger siblings, Jim Dingell and Jule Walowac, and his son Christopher Dingell.

Both photographers were in about the same place (here's the AP shot from the News):

Who's at right, and who's on Rep. Dingell's right? I'd bet on the Freep in this case, though that's no reason to use either "reacts" or "iconic."

Today in clickbaiting

Doesn't the headline just fill you with the urge to click on through and see what the answer is? That seems to be the mission, at least; the Fox News website has discovered the magic of clickbaitery and is jumping in with enthusiasm.

Not too artfully, though. If you're going to have a cliffhanger in the No. 5 spot on the homepage for Super Bowl Sunday, it probably shouldn't be the same one that was in the No. 5 spot on the homepage last Monday:

 You might even think a lede that refers to the Super Bowl as "next Sunday" was a bit of a giveaway:

Whether the New England Patriots win or lose Super Bowl 53 against the Los Angeles Rams next Sunday, Tom Brady is not ready to ride off into the sunset just yet.

When asked during an interview with ESPN that aired Sunday if there was any chance his ninth Super Bowl would be his NFL swan song, Brady said: "Zero," curling his thumb and fingers into a "0" shape to emphasize the point.
 
And there's always that pesky label over the story noting that it was posted "6 days ago":

So Fox seems a little slow in getting the hang of the whole clickbaiting thing. Maybe it should put the starters back in or preach the gospel of RTFP more loudly or something.

Being of the generation for which the whole point of the headline is to tell people something they didn't know, I have a deep dislike for clickbaiting in all its forms and guises. I'm not at all sure how widely that feeling is shared. Attitudes toward headlines seem to be shaped by the routines that readers are familiar with. If the flying verb or the noun pile looks weird to you, it's probably because you haven't scarfed down half a dozen before breakfast each day for the past 20 years.

The evidence so far is that the up-and-coming wave of news consumers isn't especially bothered by clickbaiting, though there is (hey, it's clickbaiting) This One Weird Trick: Traditional heds do better on error-heavy stories, but clickbait heds do better on well-edited stories. Clickbaiting also seems to be associated with better memory for story details. You don't even want to hear about what the photos do.**

* I'm trying really hard not to say "grownup" and apparently failing.
** Yes, you do. Film at 11.

Locker-room talk

See if you can guess what has the party press on the fainting couch this morning:

Freshman U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib wasted no time in calling for the impeachment of President Donald Trump just hours after being sworn in.

Speaking to a crowd of supporters Thursday night, the Michigan Democrat and one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress said of Trump: "People love you and you win. And when your son looks at you and says, 'Momma, look you won. Bullies don't win.' And I said, 'Baby, they don't, because we’re gonna go in there and we’re gonna impeach the mother***er.'”*

Perhaps the snowflakes should calm down a bit. If you were writing a set of rules for coding political speech,** it'd be hard not to count that as "locker-room talk" -- though admittedly more like a rookie who had doubled twice, singled and stolen a base in the first game of the Series than like an old con artist after a golf game. And it does seem a bit late in the going to get all huffy about locker-room talk. Maybe Rep. Tlaib should try changing the subject?

You know, when we have a world where you have ISIS chopping off heads, where you have — and, frankly, drowning people in steel cages, where you have wars and horrible, horrible sights all over, where you have so many bad things happening, this is like medieval times. We haven’t seen anything like this, the carnage all over the world.

And they look and they see. Can you imagine the people that are, frankly, doing so well against us with ISIS? And they look at our country and they see what’s going on.

Yes, I’m very embarrassed by it. I hate it. But it’s locker room talk, and it’s one of those things. I will knock the hell out of ISIS. We’re going to defeat ISIS. ISIS happened a number of years ago in a vacuum that was left because of bad judgment. And I will tell you, I will take care of ISIS.

So no, "unveiled" probably wasn't an accident either.

There are some cool subroutines of news practice going on in Fox's follow-up:

"Profanity," of course, would be something like asking God to damn the head of state. And how one "motherfucker" makes a statement "profanity-laced" -- apparently that's just another Magic Phrase of Journalism.

The fear knob certainly has been dialed up to 11 the past couple days at Fox. Here's the lead story from Thursday around 7 a.m.:

 And from 11:25:

And from 1:45:

So the question for the audience at year's end was: Is Fox scared of girls? The answer seems to be that Fox is scared of almost everything, but it's flat-out terrified of girls.

* Could you at least count the motherfucking asterisks, please?

** There's still space in that Tuesday night content analysis course, kids!

Four shirts good! Two shirts bad!

To the barricades! Retailers are besmirching the honor of the Dear Leader by ... what's your No. 4 story of the morning there, Fair 'n' Balanced Network?

Walmart has found itself on the receiving end of a torrent of outrage after it was discovered Monday that the superstore was selling anti-Trump “Impeach 45” apparel on its website.

The outcry sparked a #BoycottWalmart trend on Twitter as users expressed their distaste for the chain promoting the impeachment of President Trump, echoing some Congressional Democrats.

Clearly, the only honorable course of action is to remove the items immediately! Except ... you know, we really hate to be a pest, but what was the No. 4 story on Sunday morning?

An Australian pajama company is facing backlash after pulling a controversial shirt from its website.

Bridie Harris, a woman from Melbourne, was shopping at Peter Alexander Sleepwear when she noticed a boys' pajama top emblazoned with the phrase “Boys will be boys,” The Sydney Morning Herald reports.

Oh. 

So apparently the only thing worse than sparking a torrent of right-wing outrage is giving in to a customer request. Got it, Friends of the Invisible Hand!

Winter wonderland

So if you clicked through from the Fair 'n' Balanced home page to the story that moved into the lead position* around 9 a.m. Saturday and thought the view looked familiar,** you might be wondering what the illustration has to do with much of anything:

Storms that yielded recording-breaking snowfall in the South during the week were expected to hit the Northeast on Friday evening and continue causing problems throughout the weekend.

Once you get past "recording-breaking" and stop wondering why no one's updated "were expected to hit the Northeast on Friday," you're still left with a big question: What's a photo of a Detroit freeway in January 2014 doing on top of a story about something that either has happened or might happen to the Northeast in December 2017?

Winter Storm Benji was moving up the East Coast, with heavy snow predicted for a 2,000-mile stretch from the Deep South to New England. Some spots could see as much as 10 to 15 inches of snow, forecasters said. 

The link to the Weather Channel story (updated at 10:15 a.m. Saturday) suggests where some of the raw material might have originated:

Winter Storm Benji is now spreading snow to much of the Northeast Seaboard, after blanketing a swath of the South with record-setting snowfall.

By the time Benji departs the Northeast, it will have laid down a blanket of snow 2,000 miles long from Texas to New England.

Facts, like Legos, just sort of sit there until someone builds a story out of them. There is a "2,000-mile stretch," and "heavy snow" is predicted for some parts of it, and no doubt there's been some blanketing. But the current winter advisories (per the Weather Channel map) start just southwest of Asheville, which -- being in the mountains near ski resorts and all -- has actually seen snow before. You might be forgiven, at this point, for wondering what sort of story is being built for you. Back to Fox:
Read more »

2 Dacron women feared missing

What does it take for national news to land in the lead position at the Sunday fishwrap?

The Detroit Red Wings are exploring possible legal action after a slightly modified team logo appeared on signs held by protesters at a violent and deadly white nationalist rally in Virginia on Saturday.  

Oh.

The signs, which showed the team’s winged-wheel logo spokes altered to look more like swastikas, sparked outrage in the National Hockey League and among social media users.

I wonder when we'll menti0n the war recent unpleasantness. Who had "after the jump, fifth graf"?

... The sign holders were among thousands at the volatile Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville to protest the removal of a monument to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. One person was killed and at least 19 injured after a car drove into a crowd of protesters, hours after a state of emergency was declared due to the event.
Read more »

The face of Goldstein

Why do you suppose this might be Wednesday afternoon's No. 2 story at America's Leading Cable News Network? One hates to be in the habit of quoting Orwell too often, but ... how does the Two Minutes Hate start off again?

As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed on to the screen.

If you wonder why people in your work unit don't throw things at the telescreen when Soros (or Alinsky, or Blumenthal, or Gruber) comes on, you're not looking in the right direction:

Billionaire George Soros gave $246 million to groups behind Wednesday's "Day Without a Woman" protest, according to a report by a conservative think tank.

Wednesday is "International Women's Day," and schools in at least four states canceled classes so teachers and staff members could participate in "Day Without a Woman" demonstrations.

While movement organizers say the demonstration is meant to spotlight gender inequality, critics say it is intended to protest President Donald Trump. The strike was created by the same organizers of the historic Women’s March on Washington in January, which drew hundreds of thousands in protest of the president.
Read more »

News values and news language

It takes a lot of the worry and frustration out of news judgment when you have a few simple rules to move things along:

Editor A: What's the lead story for tomorrow?
Editor B: Dunno. Who did the Big Man meet with?
Editor A: Sounds like a lead to me!

(As the examples at right suggest, some habits made the transition from print to online with few or no changes needed.)

When you can get three separate stories out of a single appearance by the Big Man's campaign manager on your Sunday talk program, there's even more Fox to go around! This charming eggmanteau in Sunday afternoon's top story, for example:

Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said Sunday that the Republican presidential nominee now plans to go directly into African-American communities to deliver his full-forced appeal to black voters, while also trying to explain Trump’s changing policies on illegal immigration.

I'd certainly agree that it's a forced appeal, but "full-forced" looks like it slept a little too close to "full-throated." Maybe we meant the NRC definition? (And yes, it's unusual not to have at least a tortured attempt to fit a first reference for a presidential candidate somewhere in the story.)

“These events are already being planned,” the newly-promoted Conway told “Fox News Sunday.” “We’re fighting for every single vote. He’s going to take [his message] to where people vote.”

To be sure, Trump over roughly the past two weeks has increased his efforts to appeal to black voters, arguing that the policies of Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and those of other Democratic lawmakers have failed residents in many U.S. cities, particularly African-Americans.

Hmm. I appreciate the effort to get back to J-school basics, but are you sure that's the right "to be sure" there? What about it, The Missouri Group?

The 'To Be Sure'
To maintain an evenhanded approach, writers must acknowledge that there are two or more sides to a story. We call this the "to be sure," as in "to be sure, there are other opinions."

So -- more like the third graf of what was to become the evening's top Big Man story?

Donald Trump’s campaign confirmed that the candidate is off the campaign trail Sunday to get ready for his first presidential debate with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton but was mum on preparation strategy or likely tactics.

“He's the unpredictable X factor,” campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said on “Fox News Sunday” about Trump and his unconventional debate style.

To be sure, Trump, despite being a first-time candidate, performed well enough in the primary debates -- which included seasoned debaters like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie -- to capture the GOP nomination.

Got it! And instead of binders full of women, we'll have -- women full of binders?

“He's an unconventional candidate,” Conway said. “And he's not going to prepare the way Hillary does, which is . . . locking her in a room and cramming her head with all those binders and getting the Hollywood types that she raised gazillions of dollars with in fundraisers.”

I think my favorite, though, is this policy transition from the mainbar:

Conway also attempted to clarify Trump’s immigration policy, which at the start of his campaign included plans to build a wall, paid for by Mexico, along the entire southern U.S. border to keep out illegal immigrants and have a deportation "force” to remove the estimated 11 people now living in the country illegally.
 
OK. It's not nice to pick on a single dropped word, because there but for the grace of God and all that. But come on, kids -- it's the Big Man's signature issue.