Scare Quotes

I am so sick of seeing bullshit headlines like this:

Why the quotes?  The actual report itself:

A manhunt for a suspected knifeman has been launched today after a ‘heavily pregnant’ woman was stabbed in Aberfan in a suspected ‘domestic incident’.

Let me just parse this.

  • The woman was “heavily pregnant” — i.e., she had a huge non-Lizzo-style belly, clearly apparent.
  • She was stabbed — obviously apparent, so no quotes.  But then we have:
  • A”suspected” knifeman (my quotes).  If she was so obviously stabbed, how could the stabber be a “suspected” knifeman?

I know, I know:  the reporter is simply reporting from what he’s been told by, one imagines, either the police or hospital staff, hence all the quotes.

And it’s all bullshit.  A pregnant woman was stabbed by a knife-wielding man (even that’s redundant), and police are looking for him.  The circumstances surrounding the stabbing were, apparently, that it was down to a domestic incident — i.e. the stabber was known by the stabbee — the details of which are still unknown.

If it turns out that it wasn’t a domestic incident — i.e. that the woman was stabbed by some nutcase because he hates Tuesdays and the voices in his head told him to hurt someone, anyone — then the time for amending the report comes when the newspaper can print that no, it wasn’t a domestic incident as first reported, it was just some random loony.

I’m sorry, I meant “loony”.

I realize that this is the Daily Mail  newspaper– hardly a paragon of acceptable journalism — but fucking hell, can we at least dispense with all the prevaricating quote marks?

Isn’t THAT Special?

In case you were wondering, yes:  there is a noise in the background, and it is the sound of hoofbeats:

Why?  Silly rabbits, this is the reason:

Made In Chelsea to become first UK show in TV history to broadcast three-way kiss between male throuple as Channel 4 hire ‘Queer Expert’ to oversee storyline

Every single phrase in that headline is appalling. And try as I may, I can’t even make a joke about it.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and puke my guts out.  And then go to the range.

Fixing The Mess

I see that CNN has canned their CEO after only about a year on the job:

CNN CEO Chris Licht will be leaving the media company just 16 months after being picked for the position.

Licht announced Wednesday that he will be leaving CNN after meeting with Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav. The 51-year-old CEO will be replaced in the interim by a three-person leadership team which includes longtime CNN executive Amy Entelis, who worked closely with former cable news boss Jeff Zucker before Zucker’s resignation in February of 2022.

“For a number of reasons things didn’t work out and that’s unfortunate,” Zaslav said. “It’s really unfortunate. And ultimately that’s on me. And I take full responsibility for that.”

Zaslav told employees that CNN is “in the process of conducting a wide search” for a new leader that could “take a while.”

I want this job.  Here’s how I see it working.

If CNN is serious about rebuilding its image and ratings, what better way to signal that change than by picking an avowed conservative (i.e. me) who will not become enthralled by blowjob pieces by the New York Times  and Atlantic Magazine?

My first pledge would be to make CNN’s principle business about actual news instead of opinion — all their talking heads would be fired on Day One of my tenure — and my job would be to make their ad line “This… is CNN”  something that doesn’t instantly cause mocking laughter and isn’t used as a punchline.

See this shit?

Politicians and media personalities from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Joe Scarborough were angered by CNN’s decision to host Trump on the platform that has consistently offered friendly coverage to Democrats.

Gone.  I pledge to give unfriendly or at best skeptical coverage to everybody.  If that frightens off the Lefties, c’est la vie.  (For some reason, conservatives have no problem with this, as long as they are treated fairly — Tim Scott went on The View  recently, even.)

Sure, I know nothing about running a media company.  So what?  “Industry experience” doesn’t seem to have helped them very much in the recent past, has it?

I’d move all their New York offices to somewhere like Fort Worth, cutting the cord of the New Jersey Turnpike, so to speak, and okay, I’d make the sacrifice myself and relocate to Atlanta.

Oh, and by the way:  I’m cheap.  Best way to increase profits is to cut costs, most especially salaries (see “terminated talking heads”, above) and the best way to signal that is for the CEO to be the first to take a pay cut.  All media people are overpaid anyway.  And to those who would say that I’d be hiring cheap (ergo inferior) replacements, I would point out that the overpaid assholes they’ve currently got on staff have not exactly covered themselves with glory.

I’d be satisfied with a two-year contract at $12 million p.a., no shares or stock options (conflict of interest), with further annual extensions at $12 million each (because I don’t want to work there for too long lest I get cooties).

They could use one of these as my profile pic:

It would frighten all the right people, and please all those on the right.

To quote Roger Ailes:  “Half the market.”

What could CNN lose, any more than they’ve lost already?

Ahem

Following yesterday’s post about ads posing as news items at Breitbart, I see this little thing today:

I’m not saying that I had anything to do with it, of course, but I also note that the “Sponsored” note appears at the END of the headline and not at the top.

Improvements still needed, dickheads.

Even worse, they still tried to sneak it in as news on the sidebar:

They really must think we’re stupid.

Clickbait Hoars

I read Breitbart News  every day, sometimes more than once, to get an idea of what’s going on out there.  So it pains me when these guys piss in the soup by, in this case, treating a fucking commercial as a news item, viz. (don’t bother clicking on it, it’s just a screen grab):

Most of the comments are scornful of BN, saying things like “As sponsored by…” and so on.

Here’s the news:  nobody cares if you carry ads, or even advertorials.  But you have to tell people that they are just that and not actual news reports, like this example from, of all places, the Daily Mirror:

Otherwise you could (justifiably) be accused of abusing the trust of your customers, which in this case, you are.

Even the “mainstream” news has followed this principle, although they too have succumbed to clickbait bullshit recently.

I thought Breitbart News  was different.  Clearly, I was mistaken.  They just did a Bud Light.

Dumb shits.

It’s as though my Readers were to discover that all these years I’ve been paid by Springfield Armory to say all those horrible things about Glock.  (Relax, I haven’t.)

And I’m just a little blog, tucked away in the corner of the Internet.  If you’re in the Big Media Playground — and especially in the roped-off conservative area — trust is your only coin:  fuck that up, and you’re dead.  Ask Dan Rather.

No, I’m not going to stop reading Breitbart News, but I’m going to be a lot more skeptical about their reporting in future.

See how that works?