“Democracy sustains capitalism. Capitalism thrives in a democracy. And, right now, we are dealing with, as I called him at my speech on the Ellipse, a tyrant,” she said, referencing her rally last year on the White House Ellipse in Washington. “We used to compare the strength of our democracy to communist dictators. That’s what we’re dealing with right now in Donald Trump. And these titans of industry are not speaking up,”
Your inference on what she meant doesn’t change what she literally said.
It seems like you don’t remember what regular journalism used to be, because it was absolutely proper journalism to splice together pieces of sentences that make a shorter version for a title, as long as it was clear that the original really did mean that - which is the case here. The only issue here is the quotes, it would typically be “we’re dealing with (…) a communist dictator” or “we’re dealing with” “a communist dictator.” Your nitpick that the exact sentence wasn’t sliced up this exact way is misplaced, you’re not advocating for precise quotes, you’re just advocating for plausible deniability, like someone’s going to say “I didn’t say that, you don’t have a soundbite of me saying Trump is a communist dictator.” That’s just legalese, and that’s denying the meaning of the job, because actual journalism isn’t supposed to be a parrot job, this is exactly what it should be. It is, in fact, what she literally said.
Nope. Quotes don’t work like that either. You don’t get to just piecemeal the words in whatever order you want and claim “They literally said that!”.
Actual journalism deals with and communicates facts without distortion. Sometimes that’s a “parrot job”, and many times that includes personal insight, but it can never compromise on accuracy in reporting what actually happened. That’s lazy, unprofessional, and a threat to the medium as a whole. Similarly, you insisting falsehood is “fact” doesn’t make it so. It just erodes any credibility or merit your words carry, weakening your future statements that much more. You discredit yourself and everyone else that shares your stance.
And, again, nothing I’ve said has anything to do with what she meant. I’m not saying your claims of her intent are wrong. This has nothing to do with “deniability” or “legalese”, and trying to frame my point with some sort of counter-agenda is entirely unfitting.
For what an actually credible title could look like -
Accurate, and even shorter. Took me all of 2 seconds. Whoever wrote the title of the article is a hack that’s not worth the effort being put in to defend here.
What you’re asking for is state propaganda, that’s where it goes, that’s where it is right now. It teaches politicians to spin longer phrases that clearly sound like promises and denouncing bad things so they can then deny everything the next day, because “that’s not what I said.” And on the other hand, it punishes those who make a short, blunt comment and then get hounded about the exact word they use, not allowing for any explanation - or any mistake. That’s how you get nations refusing to call something a genocide, and Nazis pretending to be upset at getting called Nazis, that’s how you get any left winger denigrated because they used a word you decided was not right, while denying the meaning of a word that a right winger said. You erase the importance of meaning by focusing on the importance of an exact quote while denying an interpretation. It teaches the media that asking questions and making editorial interpretations is forbidden because only the exact phrase from the press release is permitted, making it easier to manipulate the message being put out, because copy-pasting is easier than interpreting, and it reduces variations that expose the gaps and underline the problems.
You yourself right now are denying that this is really what she said because that’s not her exact words, leaving an opening to deny the entire comment - because that’s how it goes, not necessarily from you, but from anyone who comes after that. Hell, you’re already dismissing whoever wrote this as a hack because you don’t like that they didn’t use an exact quote, even though the meaning is absolutely right and you know it. Even your suggestion will be met with “but what was the exact quote” from people who will promptly ignore everything you say that’s longer than one sentence, and what you thought was more correct than this title will be deemed not correct enough. Like it or not, this is historically how journalism did things right, this absolutely was how quotes worked, until Fox News had to argue in court that only an idiot would believe they were news, and then nothing came out of it except Fox getting more power. This is how people keep moving toward more autoritarianism, that is what they have been doing, and that is what is happening now. Diversity in journalism is a good thing, and what you are defending only pushes toward uniformity.
That’s a lot of words for “I still don’t/won’t realize what your point is”. If you want to imagine enemies where there are none and waste energy argue against points no one you’re talking to is making, that’s your prerogative, but you’re not going to achieve much. Good luck with that.
Your argument is literally that you don’t like the editorialized title, that’s it’s lazy and unprofessional, that the title alone is somehow distorting facts, that you think your version is better, and that the writer is a hack because of it, even though the point is correct, and you claim that parroting a press release can be the job of a good journalist. And you’re trying to wiggle out of it by pretending that it’s not the point you’re making, even though I am quoting you. I am telling you that this way of splicing quotes used to be correct even if you don’t like it, and what your argument leads to, and you still want to stick to it.
Exact quotes can be in the article. The title can be an editorialized summary that gets the point across as long as it’s a correct interpretation that you give your argument for in the article.
Swing and a miss.
We’re dealing with a fucking menace of a president. That’s the important thing to focus on, goddammit!
This is the akin to the pedantic gymnastic arguments that people keep using trying to protect themselves from accepting Kirk’s fascist bullshit. He literally said a bunch of heinous fascistic shit, and people will argue “context”. You’re arguing pedantics for no good goddamned reason.
Her first sentence involves the second, and vice versa. They are not exclusive of each other. They are two clauses of a singular thought. Stop. FFS
For someone so against meaningless arguments, you are quite insistent on continuing the argument about things I’m not talking about. For the fourth time now - it doesn’t matter what she meant. Quotes in journalism (especially in headlines) are for verbatim statements, not paraphrased inferences.
Double quotes are distinct from single quotes in some journalistic style guides and can be used this way.