Monday, January 03, 2005

How Soon We Forget

The same people who will refer to "Star Wars, Episode 9: Quest for Cash" as "Star Wars" seem to have forgotten that we had a President George Bush, oh, not so long ago. Many years after Zachary Taylor, I believe. Now, I'm not going to get all AP-style-nazi on you and say every reference must be "President Bush," but if you're going to use the "George," the "W" is not optional.

1 comment:

M@ said...

Thanks so much for this. I think it's a symptom of the "everyone can write! it's just news!" attitude in our blog-loving culture. People without experience, or intelligence, or editors, or even good examples, are reporting "facts" and getting worldwide praise for it.

I think what the blog post logically leads to -- and you might well correct me -- is that we expect people to understand that things happen in a context, and that context has a lot to do with how news is framed and stated.

Although I've never worked for a news organization, I expect that in a reputable news source, understanding this context and ensuring facts are placed correctly within it constitute the editor's real work.