News media writes reports about past tense events before the events have occurred

News media writes reports about past tense events before the events have occurred

Have mentioned this before but today is another example, courtesy of the Washington Post, who published a pre-written report in advance of the actual BLS unemployment release. This is what they wrote. This was, in fact, fiction.

And was later rewritten to this:

The take away is that “news” used to be thought of as a “report about past events”. Today, news is pre-written fiction about future events on the basis of assertions and speculations.

The mistakes on pre-written reports or often like this – and suggest a reporter may have put together a story based on around what they were hoping would occur.

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