Daily affirmations of a word mercenary
A light smattering
19Nov2003 Filed under: LinkageThis AP article about Bush’s visit to the UK takes extra efforts to minimize the protests in the UK, describing crowds as “light” and merely “a smattering of protestors.” Whenever the wire uses general descriptors to convey crowd size, I always get suspicious.
Also!
I love this quote from an article about the whole Michael Jackson thing:
Sneddon claimed the timing of the search had nothing to do with the release yesterday by Epic of Jackson’s “Number Ones” CD/DVD … “We’ve been ready to do this for some period of time.”
That’s such a nice way of saying absolutely nothing: “We’ve been ready to do this for some period of time.”
Boss: Ariel, did you get around to that project?
Me: Yes, I’ve been ready to do it for some period of time.
Some period of time. That may be the most vague media speak I’ve heard in, well, some period of time!
2 Responses to “A light smattering”
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Hey there. I'm Ariel Meadow Stallings, a native Seattleite who's written my way up and down the Left Coast. Electrolicious is where I post daily randomata, but I also write for a living. My first book, Offbeat Bride, was published last year.
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El Gray
November 20th, 2003 at 8:39 am
That IS a great one. I guess that’s what you’d expect of a journalistic organization with a certain level of quality!
dave
November 20th, 2003 at 9:05 am
You can’t take the AP (or any other mainstream media outlet) too seriously. They just as often, if not more often, over report the size of protests, and the tv outlets keep their crowd shots in close to make the crowds look bigger than they are.
But the most comical thing the AP has done in recent memory is this story. There may or may not be some validity to the story, but the photo they use is so obviously photoshopped that they should be ashamed of themselves for publishing it as a real news photo.