Quote:
In the court document filed this week, Scheibe accuses police of pressuring her.
"When I was being questioned by police, I felt very intimidated," she said. "I was not allowed to call an attorney nor was I allowed to eat or drink anything for a very long time."
Heather Smith, a spokeswoman for the Seminole County Sheriff's Office, denied that claim.
"As you know, we provided media with the 911 call from Ms. Scheibe, which occurred prior to deputies responding," she said. "Apparently, Ms. Scheibe may have misspoken about the facts of her interview as she had access to her phone and was provided with food."
Elinda wrote:
gbaji wrote:
If the spokeswoman is trying to say that the inconsistencies between the 911 call and her claims after the fact mean we shouldn't believe her claims about her treatment by police, then why not actually come out and say that (or write it)?
Because that is opinion. What she
did say is factual stuff that happened.
Sure, but it's not facts that in any way support her denial of the claim made by Scheibe that she was not allowed to call an attorney or eat or drink for a very long time.
Read it again. Then read it slowly. Don't inject any assumptions, just read what is literally written in the article. All that's there is one fact: That they provided the media with the 911 call, and the conclusion that "Apparently, Ms. Scheibe may have misspoken about the facts of her interview as she had access to her phone and was provided with food."
What's missing is how the one fact supports that conclusion. It doesn't. Not by itself. I get that we can make assumptions and fill in the blanks, but we really should not do that, and it's incredibly sloppy journalism to require us to do so.
Quote:
You draw your own conclusions, but rarely are they the same conclusions others come to.
That's because most people don't realize just how often they are influenced into taking positions via insinuation, innuendo, and implication, rather than taking them based on actual facts and logic. This is another example, which may be relatively harmless, but is still annoying. It's not this specific case that is at issue, but the trend of reporting which basically trains people to read into articles that which is not actually present. And that's leads us to the kinda of stories where everyone reads it and concludes X, until someone like me comes along and points out that the article doesn't actually say X at all. And then hilarity ensues as everyone (that's a good number of posters on this board) insist that they weren't being lied to or manipulated by the media.
Read only what's actually there, not what someone wants you to assume. That's all I'm saying.
Edited, Dec 11th 2013 5:34pm by gbaji