Manipulating Truths

This post may seem like a post about abortion though it's not. This phenomenon first came to my attention when Ben Shapiro from the Daily Wire brought it up. This happens when people from news outlets want to push forth a certain ideology. As such, everyone is prone to doing this. I may have done this as well and I'm simply not aware.

Some of the more liberal news outlets will sometimes call a child in the womb as a fetus, or an embryo, or a fertilized egg, or a clump of cells when talking about abortion. They try their very best to avoid using the terms baby, child, or son/daughter when the topic is about abortion but they will use these terms when reporting stories where the child is wanted (i.e., when a premature baby is born and lives).

They're also called a child or a baby even before they're born when the mother carrying the baby is planning to carry the pregnancy to term. This sort of hypocrisy is the type you'll find in several news outlets which clearly shows their biases.

The recent incident with a Chinese boat and Filipino fishermen for example has been called an assault by a prominent news outlet. However, when a similar incident occurred under a different president, they called it "likely accidental". Whatever the case is, whoever is liable should be held accountable. It's clear that this news outlet simply wants to make one incident sound more dangerous than another even though the incidents are very similar (the accidental one involved a Filipino fisherman dying).

This, however, should not be made to say we throw away everything a biased news outlet reports. In this case, we gather what is true and throw away the bias that has been injected into the news. I think, however, that news outlets or at least news reports should try their best to be consistent.

If they call similar incidents accidental one time and assault another time, it's a good bet they're trying to manipulate the facts to say what they want their readers to think. If they call the child in the womb a fetus or an embryo or a clump of cells one time and a baby other times, it's a clear indication there's something they wish to hide from their readers or a truth they themselves wish to hide from.

It's very obvious that language and words have an effect on our perception of different things. A solid example other than the ones I've mentioned would be using the word "fashionably" before the word, "late". Call a spade a spade. "Fashionably late" simply means late.

Another red flag when trying to spot these words that try to manipulate truth is to see how wordy they make the headlines or the news bits. Saying things like fetus instead of baby/child can throw off the truth while still being "technically" truthful.

I'll end this post with one such wordy headline which I can't believe was even worth being in the news. CNN has reported back in 2017, "Transgender man gives birth to boy." I think this can be simplified in one of two ways. One, simply don't report it. Two, "Woman gives birth," which is hardly a newsworthy bit of news, in my opinion.