Thread: Weird News
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Old 09-05-2008, 10:07 AM   #158
Flint
Snowflake
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Dystopia
Posts: 13,136
Quote:
Why do I even care? It's the last sentence that tries to sound all ominous that the printer refused to comment. Like that makes them guilty or something.
We're conditioned to assume that a news story is a compact summary of the relevant material, which has been scoured over by an editor to remove superfluous verbage; therefore we assume that any sentences contained are actually pertinent to the story.

One of my least favorite tricks of the journalistic trade is to include a total non sequitur in the story, and let the assumed reason for including the sentence create a connection that doesn't exist, or can't be demonstrated directly.

This one is very popular: "couldn't be reached for comment" equals "GUILTY AS HELL."
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