Here's an example; An article is printed, or posted, and it paints a picture of circumstances which causes the reader - the vast majority of who know nothing to very little about the actual circumstances of the situation, or conditions, and based on that information conclude incorrectly.
I'm referring to the technique of facts by omission. The writer's not lied, or deliberately mislead the reader, they've just not included all the pertinent facts which play into the scenario.
Here's a specific example I found this morning: "Tensions rise in federal prisons as weary prison guards go without pay, work double shifts" is the headline (written to report how the partial government shutdown is negatively impacting federal "non-essential" employees):
In order to find this comment, I had to click on a "Comments" button at the bottom of the page to get to another page and read them.Doug Wiser: I was working 16 hour mandatory overtime shifts before I retired and there was no shutdown in effect. Not once a month, several times a week. That is why I retired the day after I became eligible. Around 100 new staff quit in the year we opened a new federal penitentiary. They couldn't get people to stay on the job because of the long hours and no notice that you were going to have to work 16 hours straight from day to day.
While I recognize the dangerous and important job they have, I can't help but recall my experience as a young man in the military just out of high school complaining about the conditions (duration of our shifts on the flight line during the end of the Vietnam War) of our job and how someone older than I retorted to me; "You've got nothing to complain about. You enlisted voluntarily, get paid each month, and get three hot meals and a cot to sleep on in your tent. Stop whining and do you job!"
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