When I expressed dissatisfaction recently with what I called "phatic journalism," a few people quite reasonably asked what the hell I was talking about.
Phatic speech, in which we all indulge, is casual comment on inconsequential matters -- the weather, last night's game -- to be sociable and acknowledge another party as a fellow human being. It is a form of harmless social lubrication, devoid of substance.
In what I would call phatic copy editing, what purports to be editing is merely inconsequential edits -- changing "like" to "such as," "over" to "more than" -- rather than a focus on substantive issues in the text. Phatic copy editing yields stories that conform to standard grammar and house style despite being superficial, incomplete, or dull. (Grammar ain't everything.)
Phatic substantive editing yields the kind of political horse racing story that we see all the time: The president's popularity was up two points yesterday but is down three points today, with positive or negative implications for the midterm elections. Hot yesterday. Colder today. Could rain tomorrow.
This is how we get supposedly "balanced" stories in which Party A asserts something and Party B asserts the contrary, without enough information for the reader to evaluate the worth of either. This is how we get reports of a "trend" that involves three people. This is how we learn the views of minority groups from the same half-dozen representatives who are quoted every time.
So that's the news. Think it'll rain?
