Faux News certainly has the right to its own "journalistic" stylebook, even if it includes the awkward construct "homicide bombing" which tells us nothing of the nature of the event as a bombing that commits homicide can be triggered from a distance or dropped out of an airplane.
(Notice how I put "journalistic" in quotes just like the Washington Times does to "gay 'marriage'")
And I certainly hate to rant about journalistic ethics the very week of Hunter Thompson's death. But it seems Faux is rewriting AP copyright stories (like I have much respect for copyright) to incorporate their treasured phrase "homicide bombing."
And now they've done it to a quote from Hillary Rodham Clinton, notes Atrios:
"Not one polling place was shut down or overrun and the fact that you have these homicide bombers now, wreaking such hatred and violence while people pray, is to me, an indication of their failure," she said.
As the original AP shows, she calls them "suicide bombers."
Paraphrase? Sure. Bracket and ellipticize in print? I guess. But as Warren Beatty kept ranting in Reds, "don't rewrite what I write." Or say.
Of course, being a radio journalist I didn't have as many options, though I did make a really funny tape once of all the inarticulate pauses I cut out - literally CUT out with a razor blade and quarter inch TAPE - of a too-long Chuck Grassley soundbite. I spared my listeners, but it was a big hit in the newsroom.
Politics
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