Comment by virgilp
6 years ago
I think unfortunately journalists are trained to take phrases out of context so that they sound "sensational" / trigger emotional responses in the readers. You quickly find that out if give out interviews - you need to be very mindful how things may sound if taken out of context.
E.g. a while ago a newspaper here took me an interview/ they were building a story about people that had somewhat remarkable results in school & ample opportunities to leave (e.g. I participated in IOI and had 2 medals), and still chose to stay in the country - what were their motives, how it turned out for them. During the interview, I mentioned something along the lines that "I earn well enough to afford everything that I want, and my friends/family is here, I'm used to the local culture, etc". As a result, "I can afford everything" became basically the headline.
Wealth is one of the classic ones that journalists like stretching. My mom, a classical musician, got asked about her wages, and after some back and forth (since they varied by the job, of course), she was given this more specific question: "what's the most you made from a gig?" The sum she replied with, of course, made it into the resulting magazine article as an hourly average. Cue the stinkeyes from colleagues.
This is so common in British press of lower quality: an engineer on £80K salary gets arrested for x,y,z. A man in his 30s left his £2M house before he decided to steal money from the donation box and etc.
Is it possible to sue for this kind of misrepresentation (lies), or do you need to prove financial (non social) damages?
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Those are not journalists. They are outrage-farming ad impression generators.
I don't think that distinction is helpful. Journalism is too important to our society for us to give the profession a free pass by giving the shadier parts a different name.
I'm sure that wasn't your intention but a profession won't improve if there's a way for its practitioners to shrug off criticism by telling themselves some version of the no true Scotsman fallacy.
Mind you, that was for a so-called "quality", printed paper. I don't even think it was a daily, I think it's a weekly "business" paper.
Tomato tomato
My friend's cousin got involved in some shady activities and some regional newspaper ran a full page article on this. That's where a 2 bedroom semi detached in a not so glamorous part of a small town became: a large villa in a leafy part of the town...