Cynicism: a Greek philosophy of the 4th century B.C. advocating the doctrines that virtue is the only good, that the essence of virtue is self-control and individual freedom, and that surrender to any external influence is beneath the dignity of man. — Cynic, n. — Cynical, adj.
I was catching up on my Vanity Fair reading in the sun yesterday. Actually just my legs were in the sun. It was so hot that my head felt like it was going to spontaneously combust after 15 minutes. And just why exactly are calves the hardest part to tan?!?! Anyway…
I have not read my VFs since last year so I have a stack of them. They are more of a summer time in the sun reading item for me. I like to page through the entire thing including the Letters section. I noticed 2 people wrote in about inaccuracies from an article about King Tut. It happens all the time and usually the pat response is “we stand by the author, the end,”
But in this issue, someone pointed out that the packing and shipping of the artifacts wasn’t entirely explained (having to do with political upheaval, the navy, etc. not just packing tape issues. Actually interesting details.)
The second letter pointed out that the article stated that the “Treasures of Tutankhamum” tour concluded at the Met in NYC when, in fact, it went on to the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco afterwards and that the attendance surpassed that of all other shows. And even that the museum stayed open longer several days a week (until midnight) to accommodate all of the visitors.
VF replied that the original article by the author included all of these details but they were cut due to space constraints.
Really? It’s a 13 1/2 page article (about half were photos.)
So a couple details about a subject you were writing about were just cut? And by cutting the SF detail, you could say the article stated a falsehood by saying the show concluded in NYC. I assume anyone taking the time to read the article was doing so because they are interested in the subject and wanted to know about it. So who decided these were insignificant details to simply cut?
But I’m not some huge Tut fan or SF museum tour fan insulted by this slight. No, my bigger question is how many times does this happen in more “important” articles such as Vanity Fair’s tiresome Obama and liberal ass-kissing/bashing anything and anyone not drinking the Kool Aid being force-fed to everyone.
The media’s job now is to sell magazines, newspapers, ad clicks, get eyeballs on the site and unique visitors up. The truth? Include all the facts? That’s just silly and old-fashioned. We report what we want to report. What we think you should read.
This is why I never, ever, ever just believe anything I read in a magazine, paper or anything from any “news” outlet. But you’d hope that at least the fun/fluff subjects would be easier to be honest about. I guess not.
