"As the president of the United States, you have power to change the course of history, and the responsibility to save lives right now," the staffers wrote.

“As the president of the United States, you have power to change the course of history, and the responsibility to save lives right now,” the staffers wrote.

  • Tlaloc_TemporalEnglish
    202·
    8 months ago

    It is implied

    Someone did the implying, and that’s bad practice. You are correct that intent is irrelevant, yet you take issue with the headline being accused of intentional misinformation.

    The thing about implications is that they exists regardless of your intent or your audience’s comprehension. It doesn’t matter if the headline is technically correct, if a significant portion of the audience leaves misinformed, that’s poor jounalism. The extent to which this happens here edges into malpractice, either from ignorance or malice.

    Since you take issue with the accusation, you either disagree with the claim of malice or the claim of misinformation; as you reject the former you must disagree that a headline that gives a drastically different interpretation of reality is misinformation. Am I wrong?

    • TokenBoomer@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      224·
      8 months ago

      It’s called grammar. I didn’t make the rules.

      As as a conjunction

      The conjunction “as” has several different meanings. We use “as” when one event happens while another is in progress (‘during the time that’). In this case the verb after is often in the continuous form:

      “They arrived as we were leaving. (time conjunction meaning ‘while’ or ‘when’)

      So I don’t see it as malice or misinformation. I had no no trouble with the headline.

      • Tlaloc_TemporalEnglish
        131·
        8 months ago

        An implication doesn’t need to be directly conveyed, especially in a situation so small as a headline. Implication is often used in headlines to convey more information that explicitly stating everything, and especially to save on word count.

        For example: “TITANIC SINKS, 1500 DIE” Purely by literal meaning: A big boat sank, and somewhere at somepoint, many people died of something. Odd to include that people have died before, that’s just a fact of life, but the Titanic was carrying a lot of people, did they survive? Too bad the headline didn’t say, I guess they don’t know yet.

        We could look even deeper and conclude that Biden rejected the possibility of a ceasefire specifically because the former staffers demands. I don’t think he’s that spiteful, so it would be an odd interpretation, but it would be fully grammatical correct. Sorry, I didn’t make the rules.

        As, because and since are conjunctions. As, because and since all introduce subordinate clauses. They connect the result of something with its reason.

        As you were out, I left a message.

        She may need some help as she’s new.

        So I don’t see how a single definition rules out others, as several exist.

        • TokenBoomer@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          215·
          8 months ago

          So, you didn’t like, or understand the headline, and that’s the author’s fault. Fair point. It doesn’t make it grammatically incorrect though. Email the writer and let them know, if it means that much to you.

          • slackassassin@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            122·
            8 months ago

            So they were grammatically correct with their intentionally misleading headline. Glad everyone reached a consensus.

            • TokenBoomer@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
              214·
              8 months ago

              Because it’s grammatically correct it’s not intentionally misleading. “As” is the keyword. Run has 645 meanings. Just because people interpret a phrase differently doesn’t mean it’s wrong, or malicious.