Decades of working the refs

James Fallows makes a very good point here.

https://twitter.com/JamesFallows/status/1687847616103473152

Reporters generally (or always?) don’t write the headlines and subheads; that’s the editor’s job. The first para of the story certainly pulls no punches, ending with “He is an inveterate and knowing liar.”

Another thing: there’s an ambiguity in quotation marks. It’s not always clear whether they’re straightforward (someone said this) or scare quotes. But Fallows is still right: even if ‘Lies’ is quoting the indictment, it can still look like scare quotes.

https://twitter.com/JamesFallows/status/1687859317204996096

Yep, he certainly has a point there too. Habit? What a benign word for a pattern of criminal behavior.

He sums up:

To underscore a point well known in journalism but not so much in civilian world: 99% of the time, the issue w NYT framing is headlines, subheds, “social sells”—presentation on Xitter et al. Rather than stories themselves. Alas, 99x more people just see the headlines.

Framing is important.

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