Watch the pivot foot

Here’s the No. 5 story from the Fair ‘n’ Balanced homepage Wednesday night to help explain why attitude change is often the wrong place to look for media effects — because who needs attitude change when you’re in charge of the tollbooth through which “objective” information itself is transmitted?

News agencies seem to agree that hostile foreign actors shouldn’t be clowning around in US elections, so the issue itself isn’t in question. Indeed, the event is more salient at CNN (which — imagine — is also covering the Federal Reserve, Near Eastern political violence and other stuff that doesn’t make the Fox top ten) than at Fox, and it gets thorough play at the AP. But see if there’s a bit of a difference in the information you get from the headlines:

Iranian hackers tried but failed to interest Biden’s campaign in stolen Trump info, FBI says (AP)

Iranian hackers sent stolen Trump campaign information to people associated with Biden campaign (CNN)

Somehow, these don’t seem to add up to “sharing.” You’re learning about the same event, but you’re learning different things about it. Here’s a bit from the texts:

The agencies noted that there is currently no information indicating if recipients replied to the messages. (Fox)

There is no indication that Biden’s staff ever replied, the statement says. (CNN)

You can see it happening in any busy newsroom: Hey, “if” and “that” mean the same thing (right?), and “if” is only half the length, and presto! Except — think of the if/whether distinction — they really aren’t built to transmit the same kind of information.

Another bit of data is somewhat less subtle. CNN and the AP include comments from both the Trump and Harris campaigns. Fox includes a comment from Trump himself — like the poor influencers who took Russia’s money without knowing it, he’s certainly an aggrieved party here — but waives the routine of balancing. As it might with a cop story, that doesn’t mean there’s no rule, but it does suggest that there are rules about applying the rule.

And that’s the beauty of the framing/agenda-setting process. Given different maps through what looks like an identical thicket, you can end up in some strikingly different places.

 

It's the best there is

Every editor, no matter how open-minded, has a peeve or two that never escapes

unranted-about. This is one of mine, and since it's now showed up in my local paper twice this week (today, above, and Tuesday, at right), you get to share it too.

Granted, Catch-22 is some catch -- by some accounts, the best there is. But it is not the problem facing the restaurants and bars (not "eateries," or you're getting into multiple peeve territory). Here's a summary from today's piece, which, aside from the kicker in the print edition, doesn't even mention Catch-22:

Now as they slowly reopen, they're faced with the new reality of keeping their customers and employees safe, while trying to be profitable.

Those are some serious issues, compounded by more challenges for the employees: who do you call out for breaking the rules and when, and with what expectation of support? If an officer walks in and says "gimme eat," do you give him eat or tell him to put on a goddamn mask and ask politely? But "Catch-22" is not a fancy word for a problem with no easy or pleasant answers; it's a problem that eats its own tail. Let's say the state Health Department has issued an order saying that employees who have an irrational fear of catching the coronavirus don't have to work. All they have to do is ask for paid time off. But if they ask for paid time off, they must have a rational fear of the coronavirus, so they're not eligible. That's a catch-22.

The source quoted in Tuesday's story gets it literally right: "It's a no-win for everyone." Call it that, or a lose-lose. It stands out better when it isn't dressed up as something it's not.

You may be a batter ...

Always nice to see the Sport of the Gods crack the Top 5 at the Fair 'n' Balanced network, isn't it? At least, until they start writering:

The Texas Rangers pulled off a move on Thursday that reportedly hadn’t been seen in more than a century.

The team managed a triple play without retiring a batter after Los Angeles Angels player David Fletcher smacked a ground ball toward third in the fourth inning at Globe Life Park in Arlington, Texas, MLB.com reported.

Seem a little out of adjustment? As in, you have to start a triple play at "without retiring a batter," because otherwise you can't reach three outs? See if it makes more sense in the story Fox cribbed from:

It had been 106 years since a Major League team turned a triple play in which the batter was not retired before the Rangers turned the trick in Thursday's 8-6 win over the Angels at Globe Life Park.

... According to STATS, this was the first triple play in which the batter was not retired since June 3, 1912, when the Brooklyn Dodgers did it against the Reds.

Oh. The batter. The definite article, you might say. If you can wade through the hurling and snagging and random apostrophes, here's Fox's description of the play:

The bases were loaded when Rangers’ infielder Jurickson Profar snagged the incoming ball and stepped on third: out No. 1. He then tagged the Angel’s runner on third, Taylor Ward: Out No. 2. Profar then hurled the ball toward teammate Rougned Odor, who touched second base.

Out No. 3. Triple play.

Which kind of leaves out why Ward was still in the neighborhood ("Every runner thought it was a line drive, that's why we got a triple play"), but you get the idea: Cool triple play!* Just not quite the one we were led to believe.

* Not that there are humdrum ones; "exciting triple play" is in the "brutal murder" category of Needless Words.

Emergency hyphen drop requested

Sometimes upstyle headlines are their own reward.

As your students ponder where they would put the hyphen, a friendly reminder that even if your goal is a major-market TV station, those boring old editing skills might come in handy.

Mic drops of 1934

Clearly not the same flavor of dropping the mic we see today, but still worth a note. It's January 1934, and a popular radio personality is in Washington:

Father Charles E. Coughlin, Detroit radio priest, forsook the microphone today to deliver a typical Sunday afternoon sermon in the vaulted caucus room of the house office building.

His text was money; his audience, the members of the house committee on coinage and some three hundred of his radio fans, who filled every available seat and stood lined two deep along the walls to hear him.

This was back in Coughlin's pro-FDR days, so:

... "God Almighty is guiding Mr. Roosevelt: there's no question about that! And we're headed for a proisperity such as we've never even dreamed of."

I admit to a touch of longing for the days when we spelled "mike" the good old way, though given the Trib's spelling rules* of the time, I'm almost surprised that Col. McCormick didn't give "mic" a try.

* Capitalization is as in the original.

A psychotic weasel, in the nonscientific sense

See if you can guess where Dr.  Krauthammer is going with this one:

HUGH HEWITT, HOST: ... I know you’ve said before you no longer practice psychiatry. You’ve given that up. But I want to tempt you to do a little armchair diagnosis here. On the New York Times front page yesterday, Peter Baker wrote about a series of dinners the President’s been having, and our friend John Hinderaker at Powerline says he sounds whiny. He sounds depressed to me. What do you think is his mental state?

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: That’s very funny, because my specialty when I was a psychiatrist was bipolar disease. And I wrote some papers on manic disease. He’s not manic, and I don’t think he’s depressed. And I, you know, look. I’ve foresworn psychiatry simply because you really can’t do it at a distance. And one other thing is that you remember 1964 when about 500 psychiatrist signed a statement that Barry Goldwater was psychically unfit for the presidency?

HH: Well, I’ve read about it. I don’t remember it.

CK: Oh, you’re not young enough. Actually, I probably got it second-hand, for all I know.

I expect that's true. Chuckles was born in 1950, the article that made the matter famous was published in '64, and the last appeal of the resulting lawsuit was rejected in 1969. (The Supreme Court declined to hear it the following January, with Black and Douglas dissenting.)

Short version: Fact magazine, one of Ralph Ginzburg's gifts to the free-speech world, had run a special Goldwater issue -- "The Unconscious of a Conservative: A Special Issue on the Mind of Barry Goldwater" -- the month before the 1964 election, including among other things an ill-concocted "poll" of psychiatrists. Goldwater sued. Ginzburg more or less admitted at trial that several assertions in the issue were, well, you know, kinda-sorta made up despite evidence that contradicted them. So Goldwater remains one of the rare public officials to win a libel case under the Sullivan standard. Anyway, continue:
 
But that’s a real abuse. Psychiatrists, doctors and others who use their science, or even the global warming folks, you know, you have your expertise, and some people just use it to try to bludgeon other people with their authority. 

Yes. That seems to be kind of what the American Psychiatric Association had in mind a few years later when it banned jackleg pseudo-diagnosis for the media.

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The lightning bug and the lightning

We missed the great man's birthday last month,* but this quote is always in season:

The difference between the almost-right word & the right word is really a large matter -- it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.

Or between the aircraft and the aircraft carrier.

 * Celebrated by The Ridger with a particularly apt Huck passage.

Jackanapes pwned, booyah!

Under the heading "we must keep our instruments in tune," Jack Kilpatrick recalled a note he got in his early editorial days from the historian and editor D.S. Freeman: Mr. Kilpatrick: If you start purple, finish purple. In other words, don't start downmarket and expect your audience to follow seamlessly when you go high-end broadsheet.

We're used to the armchair belligerence favored by Fox Nation hed writers whenever the home team is smacking around, or schooling, or obliterating, or deveining some pesky liberal, but seriously -- "chap"? What's next: Rush Makes Example of This Hepcat?

Hound of the Buskervilles

What went wrong here -- writer reaching for the wrong word, rogue spellchecker going full Sorcerer's Apprentice on the innocent ("basking" is Word's first suggestion), or editor-induced goof? We can't tell, though it's fair to hope that it wasn't something the desk inflicted on the writer. Whatever, the saxophonist in question was "busking," not basking, on the street corner.

"Busk" is a cool verb. The OED traces it to French, Italian and Spanish verbs meaning "filch," "prowl" or simply "seek," but it isn't sure whether the original nautical meaning was to sail as a pirate or just to tack. Nor is it sure whether the sense of practicing your art in the street for tips, first noted in 1851, is related to those meanings or a distinct word of its own. Sheer entertainment value is a good reason for having a dictionary -- one whose last name isn't ".com" -- at hand as you edit. But the main reason is to keep from saying one thing when you mean another.

To give the intertubes their due, they're a good place to check whether the officeholder mentioned before the sax player is the "register" or "registrar" of deeds. The county says he's the former.

I have other complaints with the writing. I wouldn't use "a polyglot of people"; I see where the writer's going with it, but it looks like a stretch to me -- something that falls under Elmore Leonard's "if it sounds like writing, I rewrite it" rule. And "local gendarmes" has an air of archaic columnist-speak about it; next thing, Hildy or Walter or somebody is going to be impersonating a cop over the phone.

Those are esthetic judgments. I don't want to pretend they're based in mystical or unbreakable rules that only the adepts of the Magick Art of Editing have access to. I'd have to persuade the writer on those points; after all, it isn't my name on the column. But I'll have an easier time doing that if I've fixed all the things that demonstrably are wrong before starting in on the toss-ups.