Drudge: The Ellipsis As A Tool Of Deception

[KittyWampus]

Another Debunking- this from the Columbia Journal Review.

Drudge: The Ellipsis as a Tool of Deception

Drudge is using the ellipse as a weapon, with malice aforethought.
Clark's statement that "Saddam Hussein is a threat" came from his opening remarks to the committee. An ellipse then carries the reader more than 11,500 words later into the transcript to a second quotation. Finally, Drudge uses the next ellipse to jump way back to the beginning of Clark's testimony. The effect is to make Clark's testimony sound more frantic than it really is and to incorrectly suggest that Clark had endorsed the war.

The deceptive reporting continues with two final excerpts. The first is drawn from a section in which Clark states that the use of force must remain on the table as a threat, but that all diplomatic measures must be taken before military action proceeds. Drudge's selective excerpt ends with Clark suggesting that the situation with Iraq has "been a decade in the making. It needs to be dealt with and the clock is ticking on this."

Drudge would like you to think that Clark's thoughts on the subject end there. In fact, only moments later, Clark clearly stated, "but time is on our side in the near term and we should use it."

Then Drudge leads into the final excerpt with the words, "Clark explained," implying that Clark's statements in the final excerpt modified his statements in the previous excerpt. Once again, however, Drudge is cavalierly skipping through Clark's testimony: There are 3,798 words in-between these two statements -- enough to fill four pages of Time magazine.

--Thomas Lang
http://campaigndesk.org/

[Sinistrous]

1. Excellent analysis. However, If I may pick a significant nit...

Your subject line would read better if you used the word "ellipsis" instead of "ellipse". At first, I thought you were saying Drudge had somehow made use of the park behind the White House.

[KittyWampus]

2. Thanks For The Correction and The Laugh

:D

[windansea]

3. snip snip snip

another word for elipsis...soundbytes...shallow media

out of context distortion for lazy people

good post!

[kodi]

4. sommerby/daily howler was on this a while back with krauthhammer

"1...........and..........1................equals..........42"

context is everything.