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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Reform connotes improvement—"altering for the better … some faulty state of things," as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it—even when the "reforms" won't necessarily improve anything. Everybody who utters the R word is engaging in verbal sleight of hand. For instance, when Sen. John McCain promotes "campaign-finance reform," he's really pushing political censorship. When the Wall Street Journal editorial page demands "tort reform," they're merely advocating new legislative limits on the use of the courts. When the Cato Institute publishes its millionth monograph about "Social Security reform," everybody appreciates that what they're talking about is the repeal of Social Security. Let reformistas use the R word without sanction, and you've all but ceded the argument to them.