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How Many Chunks in a Gobble?

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Thu, 2011-03-17 11:14 — The Conductor
Topic: 
Politics
Storytelling
Places: 
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Organizations: 
MSM

From a StarTribune report about a study on “who bears Minnesota’s biggest tax burden” and how that might inform State and local government budgets:

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak and St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman asked committee members to rethink the aid cuts.

The mayors said they'd need to look at reductions in every corner of their budgets, including public safety, which gobbles up a giant chunk of city revenue.

How does that qualify as reporting?

Did the Mayors use the language, “gobbles up a giant chunk”? It is not a direct quote, so we would assume the electeds used different words.

What we’re presented with is not fact or news, but a storyteller’s rhetoric. How many dollars are in a giant chunk? When a firefighter comes out to save a life, is he gobbling revenue?

Certainly, politicians are expected to use the rhetoric of chunks and gobbles. And when they do not, we now tolerate journalists doing it for them.