Friday, January 28, 2005

Storyline

Michael Moore Fails to Make Cut with Writers Guild

Quite a headline, no? Makes it sound like the Writers Guild rejected Michael Moore, doesn't it? And so does this lead:
Two days after being snubbed when the Oscar nominations were announced, Michael Moore was left off the list Thursday when the Writers Guild of America unveiled nominees for its first documentary writing award for a feature film.
But here's the fourth paragraph of the article:
WGA officials said Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" was eligible but Moore elected not to submit it. Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" won the WGA Award for best original screenplay in 2003, the first time that a documentary had ever been nominated in that category.
Elected not to submit it. That means the WGA didn't snub Moore; they didn't even have the opportunity. Yet the article throws around words like "fails" and "snubbed" and "left off" before getting around to mentioning that, oh, wait, none of that is true because he wasn't even in the running. We just wanted to reiterate our "Nobody much likes Michael Moore--except the People's Choice Awards voters--all that much."

Some days I understand why people hate the media.

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