{"id":429,"date":"2008-09-23T11:47:25","date_gmt":"2008-09-23T16:47:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/election08.cusjc.ca\/?p=429"},"modified":"2009-04-24T08:10:59","modified_gmt":"2009-04-24T13:10:59","slug":"journalist-hints-at-possibility-politicians-will-be-candid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/?p=429","title":{"rendered":"Journalist hints at possibility politicians will be candid"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Jeff Sallot<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The politics page at globeandmail.com is featuring a story today headlined: <em>Layton\u00a0hints at possible Liberal-NDP coalition<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The lead says: <span style=\"EN-US;\"><span style=\"Times New Roman;\"><em>NDP Leader Jack Layton refused Monday to rule out the possibility of entering an alliance with the federal Liberals to prevent another Harper government.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>How many weasel words\u00a0and phrases can we find here?<\/p>\n<p><em>Hints<\/em> is popular when the\u00a0people being written about\u00a0don&#8217;t \u00a0actually say what the headline writer wishes they had said.<\/p>\n<p><em>Possible<\/em> is another qualifier word. What else did Jack Layton hint is possible? I suppose that until the polls close Oct. 14 he can say that the New Democrats could possibly\u00a0form a majority government.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;Refused &#8230; to rule out&#8221;<\/em>\u00a0 is another weasely formation.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been tempted to use the same phrase myself when politicians have been performing the dance of the seven veils. \u00a0But I prefer to cast the hinted at possibility in a more positive frame. \u00a0How about this? <em>Jack<\/em> <em>Layton left the door open to a possible coaltion with the Liberals.<\/em> It works better as a lead<em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Reporter and editors actually hate these kinds of stories. They don&#8217;t deserve the headline play the Layton story got at globeandmail.com today. Yet they can&#8217;t be ignored until we start hearing politicians speaking candidly.<\/p>\n<p><em>Jeff Sallot teaches journalism at Carleton University. He is a former Ottawa bureau chief for The Globe and Mail, a life member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery, \u00a0and has covered nine federal elections.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jeff Sallot The politics page at globeandmail.com is featuring a story today headlined: Layton\u00a0hints at possible Liberal-NDP coalition\u00a0 The lead says: NDP Leader Jack Layton refused Monday to rule out the possibility of entering an alliance with the federal Liberals to prevent another Harper government. How many weasel words\u00a0and phrases can we find here? Hints [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election2008","category-election-2008-faculty-links","category-election-2008-media-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=429"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":743,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429\/revisions\/743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cusjc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}