A Lie by any Other Name ...

Eric Alterman has a great piece up at Media Matters, which you can see here, where he discusses how the current practices of the mainstream media prevent them from calling a spade a spade—or a lie a lie. In a front-page story written by Jonathan Weisman, The Washington Post tiptoes around the issue of the "L-word," calling it "taboo." The headline on the story refers to "untruths."

This is not surprising to me. The Post, in particular, has a history on this count. As a wee copy editor there years ago, I was told, quite vehemently, that it was a fine choice of words to say a politician was "dissembling"—which, as I had pointed out, simply means "lying." I wondered why we couldn't use the simpler word. "Our readers know what the word dissemble means," the reporter sniffed.

I would imagine the Post's readers also know a lie when they see one.

It is a sad day for journalism when reporters and editors have to consult their mind's thesaurus to say what they know to be true.