Does this make sense to you?

Jumpstart

Jumpstart

Regular Member
My Satellite Setup
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North East
When a TV reporter is talking about, say, three men who've been jailed for one crime, he'll say 'they went to jail for a total of 25 years'.

Say 10 years for one; 7 years for the other; and 8 years for the last one.

How can you add up three INDIVIDUAL sentences to reach a 'total' single figure?

Am I missing something?
 
Nope, it's sloppy and sensationalist reporting.

Some of the things that wind me up:-

The "epicentre" - should only be used when talking about earthquakes but it seems to have acquired a spurious definition of meaning even closer to the centre when in fact it means further away. The epicentre of an earthquake is a certain depth below the surface where the centre is located.

"There is" and "there's" used with multiple objects e.g. "There's several answers to that". Eughhh!

"Decimated" meaning most of when it actually means one tenth of. So when you hear someone say "The place was decimated" you should really think "Oh, it could have been much worse".

I could go on...
 
Jumpstart said:
How can you add up three INDIVIDUAL sentences to reach a 'total' single figure?

Am I missing something?
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It is the total time the taxpayer has to cover the cost of rehousing them.
 
Another thing TV journalists do is that they'll say things like, 'the members of the Rolling Stones, 'their ages add up to a total of 348 years'. No, they don't.

You can't add on people's ages to give you another figure to go, 'look at that'. It's stoopid.

And if you subtract 348 from 2011, that would mean the year, 1663. :D I may not be the Brain of Britain, but even I know pop and rock wasn't around then. :D
 
Jumpstart said:
................'the members of the Rolling Stones, 'their ages add up to a total of 348 years'. No, they don't.
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You're right, they actually add up to 266. It might be more meaningful to say that their average age is 66 (which it is), though I've never known a journalist, - tv or newspaper - let the truth get in the way of a good story.
 
sonnetpete said:
You're right, they actually add up to 266. It might be more meaningful to say that their average age is 66 (which it is), though I've never known a journalist, - tv or newspaper - let the truth get in the way of a good story.
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I was counting the dead one. ;)
 
It's journalism, to them 2+2=50 million, they like making things sound worse or better than they actually are, and in some cases, they even make stories up just to sell newspapers... :-rofl2
 
2cvbloke said:
It's journalism, to them 2+2=50 million, they like making things sound worse or better than they actually are, and in some cases, they even make stories up just to sell newspapers... :-rofl2
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But it is ridiculous. I hear it all the time. You cannot add three men's jail terms together and make a total. They each serve their sentence individually. :p to them! :-rofl2
 
Maybe if they did that thing that "Station" did in Bill & Ted's bogus journey where they melded into one person, then the jail time would be added up, or something like that... :-rofl2

Who knows what goes through a journalist's mind, aside from a few tumbleweed and the odd cactus... :D
 
2cvbloke said:
Who knows what goes through a journalist's mind, aside from a few tumbleweed and the odd cactus... :D
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It's what goes through the nose that is important.
 
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