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Wednesday Morning Rant

Not Just Trust

It's old news that nobody trusts the press. As of late last year, Gallup breathlessly reported that for the third year in a row, more people had "no trust" in the media than had "a great deal" or "a fair amount" of trust. The level of trust has been bouncing around the same levels for a long time, but distrust is skyrocketing. This is a surprise to nobody and the only problem with such findings is that around a third of people claim to trust the media.

But there is more wrong with the press than the fact that they're inveterate liars and propagandists. That's a tale as old as time. Another problem with the press that doesn't get much attention, though, is crashing quality. They don't even have ability to clearly communicate their lies anymore. All their prattle about "editorial oversight" and "newsroom controls" and the like doesn't amount to a hill of beans. These people write for a living, and do a bad job of it. The lies sting even more when they're delivered so poorly.

I went looking for coverage on the Spain/Portugal power outage early this week to see if there were any early findings about causes. At the time of writing, there weren't. It has come down to "not terrorism or cyber attack" and the quote about the weather has been denied by authorities. My nickel is still on "Spain's unreliable 'green' grid failed" but time will tell. When I searched the web for articles, a top-5 hit from various search engines was from CNN. CNN may be grossly incompetent overall, but their SEO people are doing a good job.

The article is unalloyed garbage.

The blackout’s impact was dramatic: transport hubs were shuttered and governments in both countries, which share a population of around 60 million people, hastily arranged emergency meetings to coordinate a response.

I am sure the citizens of Spain and Portugal will be surprised to learn that they're a "shared population."

These people write for a living.

But travel was hit harder. Flights at major airports in the region were suddenly delayed or canceled, with travelers scrambling to adapt; online flight trackers reported that several airports saw their frequent departures suddenly halted after midday. Portugal’s flag carrier TAP Air Portugal told people not to travel to the airport until further notice.

It's curious that several airports saw only "their frequent departures" halted. I don't know what a "frequent departure" is or why "frequent departures" would bear the consequences of a power outage, but that's what's reported.

These people write for a living.

Trains were also suspended in Spain. And darkness suddenly descended in subway tunnels; video posted on social media showed blackened train cars stuck in standstill on platforms in Madrid, where the metro was suspended and entrances to stations were taped off.

I didn't know that Spanish trains are suspended from above instead of being on the ground, nor that a power outage can cause trains to levitate. Surely the writers didn't mean that service was suspended. If they meant that, they'd have written it. Added to the list of things I didn't know is that a power outage can make subway cars change color, but it's right there. They cars "blackened." Maybe they caught fire and it was char? I also didn't know that in Spain, trains stop on platforms, rather than at them. Foreign countries sure are odd. Next time I'm stuck in traffic, I will describe it as being "in standstill" so I'll sound all erudite like those wordsmiths at CNN.

These people write for a living.

Sporting events were impacted too. Tennis fans at the Madrid Open filed out of courts after the outage caused play to be suspended.

Some parts of southern France, near the Spanish border, felt a more sporadic impact.
...
Spain’s transportation minister said medium and long-distance trains won’t resume service until at least Tuesday, and the impact of a huge backlog in flights could stretch throughout the week.

Ah, so play was suspended, not the tennis match itself. I guess Spanish trains really do hang from wires! Also, affect vs. effect: learn the difference. Quit misusing "impact" as a crutch, you professional writers, you.

These people write for a living,

By Rob Picheta, Vasco Cotovio and Michael Rios, CNN
...
This story has been updated. CNN’s Jack Guy, Kara Fox and Saskya Vandoorne contributed reporting.

Six professional writers, and not even one of them can write.

It would be bad enough if they were just unscrupulous liars, but it's far worse when you realize that the self-impressed propagandists in the newsrooms are also sub-literate idiots - and so are the people who exercise all that "editorial control."