As should be established by now, I have a problem with the media. Not the idea of the media, but the sorry excuse for a media we have in the US today. I generally think they are somewhere between "irrelevant" and "harmful/deceptive."
Today, we are going with deceptive. The current banner headline on MSNBC.com is "No need to raise US alert status after UK attacks." So I read this and I was totally "woah, I've been out of it this weekend. I didn't hear about any terrorist attacks. Those poor people." I was also somewhat dismayed to find no articles about these "attacks" available.
After some research I found that they were in fact referring to the foiled plot for last week and not any kind of actual attack at all. Attack is an action word MSNBC. Attack implies that the terrorists were successful in destroying something. They could just have easily used the words "failed terrorist plot" or simply added the word "attempted" or some synonym of that. I can only assume that the reason they did not was fear-mongering -- something that the media has become all too good at. They have to find some way to sensationalize everything.
So media, if you must appeal to the basest of instincts, please at least do it in a dictically accurate way. I mean, "US still under orange level 'elevated threat' after UK freedom warriors, with aid from Jack Bauer, nightmare of all terrorists, narrowly avert devastating evil plot to attack Scotland airport," is even more scary, but least us know there was no actual "attack."
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