The media has an amazing amount of literary twits working for it. I think that no matter what politics are yours, you can agree with me on that. They make grammatical errors lots of the time, write sentences that are incomplete and convey absolutely zero thought, misspell often and on an on. Now, I admit, I often do those same things here in my blog but there are some important differences; the differences being I am not employed by a news outlet as a reporter, thus I am not paid to write this blog, in addition - I do not have an editor as are employed by the media and thus only I review my own work.
The latest fad or craze in the media, and it seems to me to be more used at Fox News than elsewhere but is indeed used by other media outlets is that: They like to use what they apparently think are necessary adjectives to describe things that, in my opinion, need absolutely no additional description. The one most prominent adjective they seem to use excessively is the word targeted. They also use it in its other form, as a verb (where it usually makes more sense, I think). For instance take the words:
Arson
Assassination
Attack
Murder
It has evidently become very chic, among the media outlets, to report these crimes as having been targeted. In other words, meaning that the victims of the attacks, the people or property, that came under attack were in fact actually selected beforehand as a target of the attack. Well, I have news for the media, of course they were targeted. If you commit arson, well then when you decide to spread an accelerant in a home, or throw a Molotov cocktail at a building, or douse someone with gasoline and light them afire - you have targeted them. Just the same as when you use a high powered rifle with optics (a scope) to shoot someone whom you intend to kill from afar, you have targeted that person. Same goes for murder (if not targeted then the charge is more likely manslaughter). If you pick someone out to murder or otherwise attack, you have in fact targeted that person. Even so called random attacks are targetted to some extent. If there was no target, then nothing was attacked.
Here are links to some examples:
https://www.foxnews.com/us/judges-waterfront-mansion-burns-possible-arson-first-responders-use-kayaks-dramatic-rescue
https://www.foxnews.com/us/giuliani-car-accident-not-targeted-attack-spokesman-says
https://www.foxnews.com/us/ice-agents-targeted-2-ambush-attacks-recent-days
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/17/politics/fbi-targeted-attack
https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/video/fbi-probing-deadly-michigan-church-attack-as-act-of-targeted-violence/?intcid=CNM-00-10abd1h
This is just a pet peeve of mine. Same goes for the grammatical errors often made by paid reporters. I guess on of the reasons this bothers me is because it in some part, maybe a small one - or maybe a large one, is an indicator of how society has degraded over time in that not many folks seem to care any longer if something is proper and correct. I think the media uses that lack of care to their advantage to whip up what they hope will become popular opinion based up their absolute lack of integrity when they report somethings - especially political facts. And somehow this has become acceptable to current society, I think more so on the left but also on the right.
Misspellings, grammatical errors, sentences that amount to gibberish in news reports, outright lies about political candidates and other newsworthy facts did not happen as frequently when I was younger as best I recall. That was because people took pride in their work back then and that pride went from the floor sweeper all the way up to the CEO of a company; and in the media that put reporters near the middle or somewhat higher up in that hierarchy of having pride in their work. Today, it seems folks just don't give a damn about the quality and integrity of their work. So they add extra adjectives to state in a redundant manner what should already be obvious, hyperbolize a report to the nth degree to inflame readers, and or tell outright lies to rile up the crowds so they have more to report.
It also seems like people who get the products that are produced by slackers also do not care, unless of course the product they use is faulty - then maybe they complain or others just shrug their shoulders and say it is what it is (a saying I only first heard in the 1990s but one that has sadly become the mantra of way too many folks). In particular people do not seem, to me, to care about quality in the media. Thus not only are errors in grammar and such frequently seen in news reports but so too are seen: political bias, racial bias, support of criminal activity and an utter disregard for what once was the integrity that came with reporting the truth in an unbiased manner (which maybe has always been kind of a rare occurrence).
Your views may differ on what I just said, but that is how I see the media reporting of the news today. Just had to get that off of my chest.
All the best,
Glenn B
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