THE NEWS HACK'S CREED:
I know more than you.
I make lots more money than you.
I'm smarter than you.
I'm sexier than you.
I appear on TV all the time.
I work ten minutes a day.
I rule the universe.
I'm going to live forever.
You are an idiot.
THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 2:
A lie isn't a lie when it tells THE TRUTH.
THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 3:
I've come to realize that the looseness of the journalistic life, the seeming laxity of the newsroom, is an illusion. Yes, there's informality and there's humor, but beneath the surface lies something deadly serious. It is a code. Sometimes the code is not even written down, but it is deeply believed in. And, when violated, it is enforced with tribal ferocity.
--JOHN "OMERTA" CARROLL.
THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 4:
News isn't news when we don't report it.
PERMALINKS:
THE NEWS HACKS' DICTIONARY
THE EUGENE DAVID GLOSSARY
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The more news hacks use statistics, the more they get people mad -- and the more politically charged a story the more suspect the numbers. These same people said that hundreds of thousands, millions, protested war in Iraq; they've given counts on Iraqi war dead that have ranged from thousands to gazillions; they gave us numbers of dead in the Riyadh bombing from 10 to 91; they give us movie box-office estimates that are sometimes off by several millions; they said untold zillions would die from SARS; they've told us anywhere from 750 to 3000 troops would be deployed to fight terrorism in the Philippines; they've said 3,000 or 18,000 are active in al Qaeda; they're addicted to global warming stories because they let them famously screw around with numbers -- AND, the biz employs Paul Krugman. News hacks already tell lies and damn lies; the statistics are but the icing on the cake.