Selling papers
I wish the media would stop using terms like "the greens LASHED OUT at national's plans" or "labour REFUTED national's claims"
The problem is that the media seems to pick these terms at random and yet they have very different connotations. In fact the later statement is usually untrue. To me refute means you have unambiguously proven incorrect, but generally the media uses it to mean "they presented a counter argument". And in the "lashed out" case the politicians probably just released to the media a letter explaining some issues. Hardly the imagery 'lashed out' presents.
Why not just say - Labour presented its counter arguments or the greens explained their issues with national's plans?
The problem is that the media seems to pick these terms at random and yet they have very different connotations. In fact the later statement is usually untrue. To me refute means you have unambiguously proven incorrect, but generally the media uses it to mean "they presented a counter argument". And in the "lashed out" case the politicians probably just released to the media a letter explaining some issues. Hardly the imagery 'lashed out' presents.
Why not just say - Labour presented its counter arguments or the greens explained their issues with national's plans?
posted by Genius at 10:33 AM
2 Comments:
People now use refute even when they present no argument at all, e.g. Benson-Pope saying 'I find such allegations ridiculous, and I refute them'.
Horrible, especially from a school teacher.
What that says to me is he takes us for idiots. There seemed to be some sort of consensus on that in the Labour party.
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