The news is reported with a lot of fear these days. So it seems to me and many other people. I have personally heard many explanations for this state of affairs, and those explanations tend to blend with other explanations of poor reporting such as blaring headlines, failure to give context, and just simple sensationalism.
I can relate. I write two blogs (the one you are reading is one of them). While I can sometimes give my opinions and reporters are not supposed to, I try to be accurate and factual in everything I write. Accuracy and truth are not always reached in my writing, I have to say, but that is because sometimes I make mistakes. It is not because of my business model.
My constant companion in my thoughts while I am writing, my mantra if you will, is this (which I have cleaned up for you): "Don't hiss them off." I constantly re-write and edit to do this or perhaps I should say, not to do this.
If you don’t hiss them off, they almost certainly will not be bothered enough by what you write, to sue you. People often react from emotion – anger, for example – rather than from thinking. I am not saying that people are stupid, far from it; just don't hiss them off and they won't bother with you.
Not hissing off the people you write about is different from pretending that they have done something that is really in the mainstream or normal or good. In my experience, you don't have to do pretend any of those things. You just have to not hiss them off.
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