Preliterate (and illiterate?) people make a distinction, when speaking, between something they know firsthand—because they were there—and something they know only by hearsay.
Back when I was a practicing journalist I ran into this problem. Journos were simultaneously held to competing standards of accuracy. On one hand, we were only supposed to report as fact anything *we ourselves* or our orgs reported; anything else was “reportedly.”
EXCEPT if some mysterious threshold of orgs were all reporting the same thing. At which point we could report that as fact even if we and our own org hadn’t reported it ourselves.
That loophole never sat well with me, and is part of the mechanism of media group-think to which you refer.
Back when I was a practicing journalist I ran into this problem. Journos were simultaneously held to competing standards of accuracy. On one hand, we were only supposed to report as fact anything *we ourselves* or our orgs reported; anything else was “reportedly.”
EXCEPT if some mysterious threshold of orgs were all reporting the same thing. At which point we could report that as fact even if we and our own org hadn’t reported it ourselves.
That loophole never sat well with me, and is part of the mechanism of media group-think to which you refer.
oh yes, oh yes
Manufactured consensus is passed off as fact, or truth.
Love this one ! I try to write from my personal experience for the most part.