The Media "is" Ignorant

Edit 2017-08-04 - I renamed this post to remove a word I now know to be offensive and ineffective at conveying the message I intended to convey.

President Bush was summoned for jury duty in Crawford last month. Obviously, the President won't be able to fulfill this summons while in office. Instead of assaulting my readers with a barrage of reasons for this, let's assume those are apparent and focus on how News.telegraph, an online news provider in the UK, reported the "event".

Alec Russell penned the article, all of which contained factual information as far as I can tell. My complaint isn't with factual reporting. It deals with the rhetoric used to deliver the news. Amid details on the lackluster story, (emphasis mine)

County officials posted a jury summons to President George W Bush at 43 Chapel Ranch Road, the address of his Texas ranch, last month.

But the White House said yesterday that Mr Bush was too busy with affairs of state to appear in court on Monday and would have to "reschedule".

We already decided that the idea of the President serving as a juror during his presidency is ludicrous. To apply accusatory rhetoric to the President's response (which, I'll point out, the article never actually quotes) is ignorant. Notice that the second sentence, which is intended to deliver the administration's message regarding the summons, has only one word in quotations. All I got from this was that at some point during Scott McLellan's press conference, he said the word "reschedule". To say that "Mr. Bush" is "too busy" makes him sound like he's trying to weasle his way out of a date with an ugly girl. I wonder what the rest of the sentence/paragraph actually said. I guarantee you the "too busy" thing is out of context. The man answered the most strenuous, verging-on-insane call to public service we could dream up in the United States and some half-wit crumpet-munching "news man" wants to call him out for dodging jury duty? You couldn't nail him to the cross on draft-dodging and you couldn't dig up any dirt on his military service. Now this? Give me a break. I want to start writing syndicated columns about liberals (and Brits). All I need to do is put one word they say in quotations and the rest is poetic license. Journalists actually get paid for this? The media "is" ignorant. Now give me fifty bucks.

P.S. - In case Alec Russell reads this, seventh graders know not to begin sentences in English papers with "and" or "but". Yes, I do it in my blog, but I don't get paid to write any of this, and as the saying goes, "I do what I want".