Clinton is FLAWED and she ran a flawed election…but that doesn’t take away from the FACT the Russians did try to hack the election…Keep up with current events.
But of course Trumpy Jr never had any meetings with any Russians…
Or is it - He had meetings but only two people where there.
Or he had a meeting because they might have some information on Hilary.
Or he had a meeting but he can’t remember how many people where there.
Or he had a meeting but there were 4 people.
Now 6 people…
Now 8 people.
Trumpy Jr keeps changing the story. Difficult to follow.
@bing, it has nothing to do with our fragility and much more to do with lawyers and our litigiousness. The following sentence is grounds for a lawsuit if you remove the word “allegedly”.
“OJ Simpson killed Nicole Simpson and Ron Brown, allegedly.”
See how that works? People aren’t fragile. It’s the lawyers that make us all gun-shy. When we see a car that has clearly gone airborne to get where it landed in a residential area we all KNOW that speed (and maybe alcohol) were involved but, until the investigation is complete, nobody is going to tempt a lawsuit by making statements of the obvious without proof.
Again, they say “speed may have been a factor”. What part about that is so hard for you to acknowledge that they ARE saying something about the possible cause?
I contend it has NOTHING to do with being sued. It’s been happening for DECADES. Go find old news clips of Walter Cronkite and you’ll hear him say things like allegedly or probably. They wanted to give you the news but keep opinion at a minimum. They would wait for the official report (from police, or hospital…etc). Absolutely NOTHING to do with being political correct.
They had tort lawyers back in Walter Cronkite’s day too.
Newscasters will always say “according to the police” or “allegedly”, or some other standard way of reporting that protects the station from being sued. If they want to keep their jobs, that is.
**“speed is a factor” is a tautology and shouldn’t be mentioned at all, ever.**News reporters are for some reason required to speculate when facts are not yet available. I suspect it is to get the “scoop” on their competition. I don’t form opinions until the facts are known and see no reason to argue about it here.
[quote=“sgtrock21, post:29, topic:106013”]
News reporters are for some reason required to speculate when facts are not yet available
[/quote]
I never did that and was never told to do that in any of the news outlets I ever worked for. There are a lot of bad journalists out there who make stupid speculative statements, but not all of them, and there is no overarching institutional rule that they have to any more than there is a single “stylebook” that all journalists must conform to regarding potentially offensive words.
I left this open because though there was a lot of semantic discussion happening (and some politics added) but if the discussion continues, please be mindful to keep it related to cars. Thanks.
The Associated Press Guide to Style. In which I learned to NOT use an Oxford comma, that the only acceptable terms were “[pro/anti] abortion rights protestors,” not to make reference to hurricanes as “having or portraying feminine attributes,” etc.
I think the reticence to state that alcohol/speed IS a factor relates more to libel concerns than PC concerns, though. If you want to make a speculative claim, best to have a witness make if FOR you, and then you can “quote” that person. That way, the speculation still gets made, and all you’ve done is to quote a witness.
Actually, the definition of an “accident” is something no one could foresee or plan for, like a meteor coming out of the sky, crashing into your vehicle. An “Act of God,” as it reads in your insurance policy.
A CRASH however, points out that SOMEONE(S) did not do 100% of what they needed to do to keep the situation safe. It could even be the fault of the locality that failed to trim vegetation around a sign, or maintain a road. In court, “fault” is assigned as portion of who pays what.
Stay safe, you know how. (sorry for the PC grammar lesson, but language does count!)
————
“The first thing we must recognize is that crashes are not accidents.”
-Ricardo Martinez, M.D., NHTSA Administrator, 1997
I have said this before…
Almost all “accidents” are not accidental. They are collisions, but not accidents.
A neighbor had a fairly large fish break the windshield on his pick-up truck while he was legally motoring down a local highway. That was a “collision” and almost certainly an accident.
Add to that the silliness in my state that considers collisions to be “accidents” and worse yet, claims the “accidents” are nobody’s fault (think “no-fault” “accident” insurance law).
It’s the same logic that allows motorcycle operators to abandon helmets if they wish, but tickets car drivers for not wearing a seatbelt, although they have government mandated air bags (that could kill occupants with shrapnel).
“We’re from the government and we’re here to help!” CSA
Silliness is arguing about this semantic at all.
Call them collisions, crashes, or accidents, it doesn’t matter. If you remove DUI related incidents from the data, I’d bet that almost a full 100% are caused by someone driving recklessly or simply not paying attention, with the latter being the bulk of the data.
I’m comfortable with whatever term(s) the legal (as in court), regulatory, and law enforcement venues choose to use… and they use all three interchangeably.
