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January 18, 2005

Scary new meme

Newscasters and writers often introduce regular segments with the phrase, "In sports today..." or "On Wall Street today..." The effect is usually comforting, because no matter what else is going on in the news, there is always sports, stock market trading, or what have you. There's no need to tell people, for instance, "Various sporting teams competed today," or, "Stock trading broke out on Wall Street," because that's a given -- the news is simply the results.

I mention this because the New York Times' Iraq round-up story today introduces a series of paragraphs with the phrase, "In violence today..." Somehow, it's not as comforting.

[Update: The story has been rewritten to accomodate breaking news and the "In violence today..." construction is now gone. Censorship! I expect the next version to read, "In freedom today..."]

Posted by Daniel Radosh

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