Today in claim quotes

Submitted for discussion: What are those suspiciously foreign quote marks doing on the front page of an (allegedly) American fishwrap?

"Bus slay punk," on its own, is a distinctly American tabloid noun phrase. It's nowhere near a genuine noun pile; the only thing British about it is the use of quotation marks to indicate -- in Ten Minutes Past Deadline's excellent summary -- "a newsworthy assertion made by a third party about which the news organisation is reserving judgment." That function is clear in "Under-fives death rate 'high in UK'," on the BBC home page even as we speak: there isn't room to attribute the assertion, but the claim quotes signal that the attribution is coming.

There's the odd part. Calling someone a punk might be rude, but calling him a killer would pose some actual legal risk, so a decent respect for the publisher's checkbook calls for a little attention to the niceties. If that's the point, though, the claim quotes aren't just in the wrong headline dialect, they're attributing the wrong thing. The one thing that doesn't appear to be in question in the Post's story is that a "bus slay" took place. Reserving judgment on that point is less a problem here than declaring him guilty in the body type, which the Post does with its usual glee.

What do you say, British readers? Do the claim quotes work correctly here?

Just another day at the office

It might be an overstatement to say that Fox News lies about everything, but it's fair to suggest that Fox News will lie about anything, because nothing is too small for Fox News to lie about in service of the cause. So this story -- starting its career at the No. 2 spot on the Fox homepage Saturday, then taking a few cycles off, then returning to the same position Sunday afternoon -- isn't an example of the extraordinary; it's literally just another day at the office.

As usual, the homepage headlines are a tad bit livelier than the ones on the story itself, so let's start with Saturday's: Not "Bitter pill," which is just there to remind you of the deserts of sinners, but the subhed: "Fauci roasted for new paper pushing debunked Trump claim, COVID origin theory." Let's say three things have to be true for the hed to be true: Fauci has to have been roasted; his new paper has to have pushed a claim and a theory, and at least the claim has to have been "debunked." (Under a distributed reading, "debunked" could apply to the theory too, but the lede suggests the narrow reading.)

There are some different twists in the Sunday subhed, "Fauci scorched over new 'scientific' paper riddled with 'false claims.'" Scorching is also a fairly low bar to clear, but "riddled" is going to need an extra step: at least some degree of counting and judgment over and above a couple of angry tweets from conservative influencers.* Fox is asserting "riddled" on its own hook (hint: it's the same two claims), but the quote marks are murky. Is Fox explaining that this is a scientific (as opposed to a popular or trade) paper, or is it nudging you with scare quotes? In US practice, the quotes around "false claims" mean those are the exact words someone used, but in UK practice (Fox headlines often have a strong redtop flavor), they could be "claim quotes": placed around a phrase to indicate the substance of an assertion but not a direct quotation.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the public face of the federal government's coronavirus pandemic response, is facing criticism on social media over a manuscript published in a top journal where he maintains his position that the virus originated in nature and cites a debunked claim that President-elect Trump told Americans to inject themselves with bleach to stop the virus.

Well, there's your scorching and roasting.** "Criticism on social media" in this case means two regular contributors to the pool of right-wing Twitter accounts that Fox draws on when a Harris or Walz or Biden needs to be slammed, mocked or blasted, plus one newcomer from the National Review stable. No scare quotes around "top journal" (fair enough; the Oxford Academic homepage lists its impact factor as 8.2). And Fauci's offenses? He "maintains his position" on the virus's origin and "cites a debunked claim that President-elect Trump told Americans to inject themselves with bleach to stop the virus." The claim has been debunked, but Fauci doesn't make it. (Nor does the phrase "false claims" appear in the story, so that's a headline invention.)

Fauci, along with researcher Gregory Folkers, published a paper in the Clinical Infectious Diseases journal this week with the title, "HIV/AIDS and COVID-19: Shared Lessons from Two Pandemics."

Fauci, who faced intense criticism for his handling of the pandemic, was critical of Trump’s handling of the pandemic in the paper.

Oh, stop the press.

"With COVID-19, the role of political leadership at the highest level – or the lack thereof – was again shown to be critical," the authors wrote. "As COVID-19 exploded globally and in the United States, President Donald Trump frequently minimized the seriousness of the pandemic, repeatedly claiming that COVID-19 would just ‘go away’ In the first full year of the pandemic (2020, the last year of his presidency) he failed to use his bully pulpit to encourage people to use available ‘low-tech’ tools such as masks/respirators, better ventilation, and physical distancing to reduce the risk of infection."

All true. But here comes the scary part, still quoting Fox quoting the article:

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Hed noun phrase plummet flock mystery

Ready to play "write the lede from the BBC hed," noun phrase joy prang fanciers?

An ambulance technician who chose not to respond to what proved to be a fatal heart attack when he was on a tea break has been told he can keep his job.

I don't know about you, but the claim quotes kinda spoil the purity for me.

US scientists believe fireworks may have caused thousands of birds to fall from the sky over an Arkansas town on New Year's Eve.

Here, alas, the claim quotes contradict the text: However, she stopped short of declaring the mystery solved, saying further tests on the dead birds are planned.

... or at least that's how I read it. British readers, is it in-bounds to use the claim quotes for an assertion that someone isn't actually making?

When life gives you limes ...

For all you Social Construction of Reality fans out there, let's follow this one around the world -- literally. We're starting with the home page of foxnews.com and the assumption -- hey, call us a dreamer -- that stories end up on the front page for a reason.

Let's click on "Outrage over candy with 'pornographic' wrapper" and see where we land. Aha! It's a six-graf story credited to news.com.au, another Murdoch property, bearing the hed "European candy under fire for putting 'fruits in pornographic poses' on box." (Yes, kids, those are "claim quotes";* nobody in the story says "fruits in pornographic poses," so the quotes indicate an assertion on the news outfit's part.) Here's where we find the outrage:

A popular candy is causing an uproar in Europe after a flood of complaints about its packaging.

Claims have been made that the fruit figures that appear on Haribo MAOAM sour candies are engaging in sex acts.

You noun fans are hard at work already, right? "Uproar," "flood of complaints," "claims"? Good thing we can Click here to read more on this story and see pictures at News.au.com, isn't it?

There we find an eight-graf story, "Haribo MAOAM sour candies feature 'fruits in porno- graphic poses'" -- same uproar, same flood, same claims, and the same solitary Yorkshireman who was buying sour candies for his brood when he noticed that the cartoon fruits were apparently having all the fun: "The lemon and lime are locked in what appears to be a carnal encounter." (We report, you decide, but be forewarned: I deeply hope this is the last bit of citrus porn that runs here during my editorship.)

Fortunately, if we want more, we can Read the full story and see more pictures at The Daily Mail ! Well, let's. Alas, that takes us to a mere six grafs from the Daily Mail itself (to his credit, though, there's another picture of the overactive lime):

A father-of-two has spoken of his disgust after spotting fruity cartoon characters appearing to have sex on SWEET wrappers.

Hmm. Somehow, traced back to the original, our continentwide outrage has collapsed back into one irritated Yorkshireman (unless you count his wife, who was apparently so dismayed by things that she had to go wait in the car, meaning we could conceivably have two irritated Yorkshirepersons). Time to secure from general quarters?

Maybe not quite. Stuff -- again -- doesn't get to the front page by accident. An intergeneric two-on-one is entertaining by itself, sure, but there's also a reminder there of what sorts of things go on in "Europe" that cause outrage among right-thinking people.** Bad stuff happens in Europe. Bad! Like fruit smut and socialism!

All right, more to the point: Shouldn't we be writing about health care and really important stuff that journalism needs to pay attention to? I'd like to suggest that we are. If you spend much time over in foil-helmet country, you've probably seen complaints this week that the In-The-Tank American Media are suppressing horror tales that the British media are valiantly bringing to light. Bear in mind, just for a bit, how true a story has to be before it appears in the Daily Mail. Because the answer, in many cases, is "not very."

* Following a question from the Outer Hoard the other day: I'm not at all familiar with news routines in Australia (other than some delightful visits to Media Watch and one season of a pretty evil sitcom whose name I can't now remember). Are claim quotes an Australian practice too?
** Or at least among one guy buying candy who wrote a letter to the Mail.

Those late-breaking quotation marks

At top is the Fair 'n' Balanced Network's No, 2 story from Saturday night; below, with quotes around "false," the version from Sunday morning.

That's a slip; even Fox usually follows the rules about using quotes to displace opinion from yourself to someone else. The revised version is a legitimate shortening* of "viciously negative and false ads" in the text, even though the quote doesn't specify which of the "ads" are false and which are just "viciously negative." But slip or not, the story's a fun illustration of how the party press negotiates the rules of objective journalism.
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Softest barriers EVAR

Every time I think I have the claim quote figured out, a new one comes along. Here, I think it's the phrasing that gets me. The quote in the linked video is: "He was breaking down barriers that nobody suspected." There's room for "Chuck Berry 'was breaking down barriers'"; if that seems too much more opaque than the current version, there's also room to take the quotes off and add the attribution: "Chuck Berry broke down barriers, Simmons says." The down barriers, though, are going to remain a problem for me.

I expect I have trouble with "over US election hack" because I'm not a native speaker of claim quotes (fair enough; the flying verb seems pretty opaque in British headlinese too). Is "hack" what needs the attribution, or is the "over" part of the contested assertion?

Sorry these are a bit old; trying to clear out the inbox before things get any stranger in the framing of international politics.

Tabloid story of the (still-young) year

You should probably just go enjoy this one in its entirety, because perfect examples of the tabloid story -- the sourcing, the breathless shrillness, the painstaking ineptitude -- don't come around too often. But there are a few things to remark on.

For one, there are the claim quotes around "drunkard," an unusually British affectation for a paper that sports an American flag in the nameplate. Do not expect to win a libel suit on this one, kiddies. If you call the guy a "murderer," you've called him a murderer. (Likewise the online hed, 'Boozed-up' plane passenger duct-taped to his seat to stop rampage: sources; the quotes wouldn't save you even if they represented a real quote.)

While we're on the subject of holes you're asking your lawyer to dig you out of? "Drunkard" doesn't mean "somebody who's drunk." Look it up.

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At the sausage factory

In our last thrilling episode, Fox science reporter Gene Koprowski was trolling ProfNet for comments from "someone who can point out the ridiculousness" of Al Gore's contention that, you know, changes in the climate can mean lots of assorted changes in the climate. Let's see how Gene did:*

If the planet is warming, why is a third of America locked in a deep freeze, with record-low temperatures as far south as the Mexican border, where the thermometer in Ciudad Juarez plummeted Wednesday night to a bone-chilling 9-below zero?

Self-proclaimed planetary climate czar Al Gore thinks he has answer.

Dude. You gave yourself an extra day on the story (the original plea said comments were needed by 11 p.m. Tuesday) and you can't proofread yourself any better than "thinks he has answer"? "Self-proclaimed planetary climate czar," to my knowledge, is simply a lie. But onward!
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Redtop hed dialect shock merge horror

Is the austere beauty of the American tabloid hed becoming indistinguishable from the baroque splendor of the London redtops? That's the impression I get from the claim quotes here.

Owing in part to their libel laws, I expect the British would avoid some of the characterizations in text:

Deranged suspect Sean Farrell, 24, called his grandmother after killing his mom — a nurse who helped care for sick children — to confess, court papers show.

“Sean told me he was scared and confused,” stunned granny Letitia Dunn told cops, according to documents.

... but the real interest here is the hed -- particularly the quotes and the lack of the comma. Input from both sides of the ocean is welcome: are we losing the core elements that make our tabs different?

Flying verbs: A user's manual

Friends of the Flying Verb, rejoice: Now there's a journalism textbook to explain it all for you! Assuming you're on track to graduate in 1943, at least.

Under the subhead "Implied subject," here's how Radder & Stempel's "Newspaper Editing, Make-Up and Headlines"* introduces the example above:

The subject may not be expressed in the first deck. It may be implied in the first deck and expressed immediately in the second, provided it is the first word in the second deck. ... Some editors consider it bad form to run headlines in which the first deck has an implied subject.

The book cautions against using the flyer "if the verb might be understood to be in the imperative mode," and the examples have plural implied subjects: "Hear Bible Scholar" and "Rob Los Angeles Bank" (followed by "Pair Flees in Automobile"):

A few newspapers have a rule against beginning any headline with a verb, holding that even the third-person singular form might be confused with the imperative.

The section on writing heds about speeches fits the specification exactly:

... though many, if not most, shops that employed the Flying Verb were far more flexible. Here's the World's Greatest Newspaper, reporting on the dustup that eventually became Terminiello** v. Chicago:

The deck is "Three policemen injured outside hall"; I have trouble seeing them as the subject of "seize."

UK readers will be happy to know that there's also a justification for claim quotes, also from the section on reporting about speeches:

When the thought to be expressed is too long to go into the first bank with the name, some newspapers permit the copyreader to enclose the speaker's statement in quotation marks and let it stand alone in the first deck. The words need not necessarily be the exact words of the speaker. If they are not, the quotation mark merely indicates that someone made the statement.

Further insights on the flyer, or formal guidance for the art of the claim quote, always welcome. Thanks to Michael Fuhlhage*** for the loan of the textbook.

* Second edition, published in 1942. The first, in 1924, was called "Newspaper Headlines and Make-Up." Radder was a former NYT rimrat who taught at Indiana; Stempel, a student when the first edition was coming together, put in some time at the New York Sun and elsewhere before joining the academic ranks.
** "Self-styled Father Coughlin of the South," as the Trib put it.
*** The one, the only, the coiner of the phrase "Donner Party comma" for the comma of direct address ("Let's eat, Grandma").

At least it wasn't the dingoes

Today's top headline comes from the BBC, and for fullest reading pleasure you need the caption from the full story too:

Mr Solomon and county officials disputed whether the culprit was a rat or mouse

Again, proper use of the claim quotes could have elevated this from a very, very good hed to one for the ages. (Hat tip to Ed and Picky for checking in last week on the art of the claim quote.) Both parties seem to agree that the case involves a rodent and a penis; in dispute is whether B was bitten or merely scratched by A. Thus the most appropriate way to set off the assertion would be:

Rodent penis 'bite' man may sue

And now back to breakfast!

March of the pronouns

A 30-year-old Pontiac man is in the Oakland County Jail and facing felony charges after authorities said he rammed a man’s car after finding his wife in the backseat with him.

You almost need a scorecard (or some extra fingers) to figure out which "he" goes with which "man."

For you outsiders? "Authorities said" isn't really part of the subordinate clause. It's acting like the British "claim quotes" -- sort of a ghostly sentence adverb, reminding us that there's some sort of privileged source to which (or whom) the otherwise potentially libelous assertion can be pinned.

On what planet ...

... with how many backward-rotating methane-fed suns, does the editor of the, you know, New York Times become "NYT Jill"?

Oh, right. The strange world of the Murdoch redtop! These are from the spring 2004 stash:

TV Henry is broke
TV Kiefer injured in bar fight
TV Carol sees spot where skydive daughter died
TV Chris is new Dr Who

In other words, The Drudge Report* isn't just the sort of place where stories reflecting gender equity issues get headlines that, you know, exemplify gender equity issues. It's also the sort of place that bows to foreign headline dialects, and that's just flat-out un-American. (Not to mention the claim quotes.)

When, when will Drudge and the New York Post be held to account for their traitorous headlines? Only you have the answer, America!

* If you get the "war" bit, you read far too much paranoid media for your own good and should take a vacation.

Notice anything missing?

There's certainly a lot of information packed into this display, No. 6 or so on the Fox News homepage Sunday evening. We learn, for example, that the suspect's car has been found, that there are bullet holes in a victim's windows (and, if you didn't know already, that a lawmaker had been assassinated), and that Fox still has no earthly idea how to use the subordinator "as" without sounding like a moron.

The meta-clues help signal how important the story is: Three writers share the byline, and three more are credited in a shirttail. Fox sticks closely to standard dateline rules, so the Minneapolis dateline means somebody's on the scene. And there's information there as well -- after a fashion. But aside from Fox's usual fascination with death porn (EWW BULLETS COOL), it seems largely procedural:

MINNEAPOLIS – New photos show gaping holes in the windows of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark's home in Brooklyn Park following a Saturday morning shooting that left them both dead.

Federal and local authorities continue to search tirelessly for suspect Vance Luther Boelter, who is accused of killing Hortman and her husband. He is also accused of shooting State Sen. John Hoffman, also a Democrat, and his wife, Yvette, in their nearby Champlin home.

Photos show massive holes in several of the Hortmans' windows on the back side of the house while other windows and their garage door have been boarded up.

Plenty of signals that the search is important: it already has its own adverb, and it's being ramped up. (By Monday, it should be time for a "desperate search"). The holes aren't just gaping, they're massive. But check out what we aren't learning. If the "also" in the second graf looks a bit out of sorts there, let's flash back to how the top story looked late Saturday morning.

At its first appearance, around 11:15 a.m. Eastern,* it looks pretty standard. The UK-style claim quotes on "shot by gunman posing as police officer" are cool but not that extraordinary (whoever writes the "cheeky snap" heds on pictures of celebrities proving that Age Is Just A Number might have drawn a bad shift this week). All in all, as promised, a "breaking news" story.

Half an hour later, it's the same event, but somehow not the same story. In agenda-setting terms, we're still learning, but we're learning different stuff with different salience values. Similarly, after he welter of procedural details on Sunday -- sheriff's office confirms car found! Residents urged to use caution! Tow truck arrives empty, leaves with vehicle! Senator shares text! -- an update (search described as "fluid"!) gets around to suggesting some cause-and-effect, a little, in the last graf:

Officials said Boelter had signs in his vehicle that read "No Kings." Cities across the United States had "No Kings" protests — expressing disapproval of the Trump administration's ICE raids — scheduled for Saturday afternoon.

Seems a bit late and more than a few bucks short, given what professional news organizations have been able to report (he's an evangelical and a Trump fan, and the vehicle also had a notebook with "the names of abortion rights advocates and health care officials") and given Fox's usual obsession with ... what's that headline from 2023?

Jan. 1
Suspect in machete attack on NYPD reportedly wrote manifesto to family

March 27
Christian school massacre suspect identified as transgender, police found maps, manifesto

April 6
Suspect with manifesto, school layout had plans to commit multiple school shootings

April 20
Why one Nashville official calls school shooter's manifesto 'astronomically dangerous'

May 4
Police group sues for release of Nashville shooting suspect's manifesto

May 17
Police group sides with school in lawsuit over Nashville school shooter manifesto release

May 19
Expert reveals twisted reasons why mass murderers leave behind manifestos

Dec. 9
Nashville police hit wall in hunt for leaker of trans school shooter's manifesto

OK, a few from 2024 too:

June 6
Suspected serial killer's meticulous manifesto revealed as body count climbs

Dec. 12
What the suspected CEO killer's manifesto reportedly said about the health insurance company

If the Mike Lees and Bernie Morenos of the world seem to have a clear field for -- what's that, The Independent? -- "feverish conspiracy theories," Fox certainly doesn't seem interested in opening the window for some fresh air, manifesto-wise. 


* Yes Fox was a bit tardy getting to the story

Of mice and pizza sabotage men

Scholars can debate whether it should be "mouse" or "mice," or whether the claim quotes should be extended to include all of "mice pizza sabotage," but surely we can set aside these differences and enjoy the strange unnatural beauty of the BBC's hed atop this story:

A pizzeria owner in Pennsylvania sought to sabotage competing shops by infesting them with mice, police say.

Gotham tab noun pile spread preposition link

The monarchist takeover of the New York Post has been an open secret for some time now, but this one from the New York Daily News comes as a bit of a surprise. It packs a lot of redtop -- claim quotes, two noun piles, and a verb-replacing preposition -- into six words.

Are they driving on the wrong side of the road up there too?

War on birds!

Not content with his War On Christmas and Stealth Assault On The Second Amendment, the feckless Kenyan Muslim socialist is going after the weakest and most defenseless among us -- our sparrows!

At least, that's how the War on Birds is reaching the public agenda over at The Fox Nation ("for those opposed to intolerance, excessive government control of our lives, and attempts to monopolize opinion"). Its source is the Washington Free Beacon ("dedicated to uncovering the stories that the professional left hopes will never see the light of day"):

Bird enthusiasts are calling on the Obama administration to cease its devastating war on birds and reverse an obscure mining rule killing possibly a million or more birds a year.

The soul of the inverted pyramid, right? Broad summary in the lede, followed by support below? Meaning the next things we should learn are which "bird enthusiasts" are involved, how their call is expressed, and how the "war on birds" belongs to the Obama administration. Keep your eye on the pivot foot as we move through the next few grafs:
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Management is angry, labor mocks

I suppose someone should log it in it for the record, so -- how would you cover Massster's most recent deranged outburst if you were the network that lived and died by Massster's every word?

President Trump lamented “s---hole countries” during immigration negotiations on Thursday with lawmakers in the Oval Office, Fox News has confirmed.

“Why are we having all these people from s---hole countries come here?” the president said, in comments first reported by The Washington Post.

The president was referring to people from Haiti, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and African countries in the temporary protected status program, a source in the meeting told Fox News.
 
The hed seems closer to a literal representation of the truth; at least, he's closer to lamenting (a lexical choice that must have burned up a few Fox brain cells around the old thesaurus) immigration from those countries, rather than the countries themselves. But, by way of comparison, you'd like a look at Thursday evening's No. 2 story -- to wit, Nancy Pelosi's bloodthirsty attack on the "five white guys":

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., took a shot at immigration negotiations involving her top deputy, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, slamming them as “the five white guys” -- and drawing a rebuke from Hoyer himself.

Speaking at her weekly press conference, Pelosi complained that the immigration talks did not include any minority members of Congress which she said was done intentionally to delay any agreement “since it would need sign-off from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and others.”

The California Democrat compared the group of men, including Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, to the popular hamburger and fry chain Five Guys.

“The five white guys I call them, you know,” Pelosi said. “Are they going to open a hamburger stand next or what?”

Management always "offers" and labor always "demands"; Liebling, thou shouldst be living at this hour.

Just for the heck of it, enjoy these claim quotes from the BBC. First, the top story on the homepage:

... then the inside version

"Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?" Mr Trump told lawmakers on Thursday, according to the Washington Post.

Enough of that. I'm done.

 

Today in noun piles

With a side of claim quotes! Thanks, BBC.

Williams. Vaughan Williams.

I've been using a "Luther King" hed from the Times for a couple years now to illustrate the hazards of random style guesses. Observations from closer at hand are welcome, but what I expect is happening is that the subs are taking a handy shortcut: Anybody who uses three names on first reference uses the last two on second reference.

The hed has since been tweaked (it's now "King statue quote 'to be changed'," with the claim quotes intact), and the story appears to have been updated recently, so I can't tell if the original text also used "King" for "Martin Luther King" on second reference. Still, it's a useful reminder of how easy it is to put a foot wrong in a shortcut.