On Day 7 of the pro-Palestinian protests on the Columbia University campus, Osama Abuirshaid stopped by the student encampment.
The executive director of American Muslims for Palestine walked through the tent city, then made a fiery speech to the gathered crowd.
“This is not only a genocide that is being committed in Gaza,” Abuirshaid said. “This is also a war on us here in America.”
Forty-eight hours later, Abuirshaid appeared at another campus — George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where he delivered another speech.
“Connected.” Another weasel word. A genealogy web site that I use can tell me how I’m “connected” to King Charles. (At least 32 degrees of separation, including through many marriages.) What are the specific allegations here?
And Charles was the Prince of Wales before he took the throne. Is that just an interesting factoid, or are we supposed to infer something from it?
That is indeed the kind of thing one could make inferences from.
Exactly. Those are weasel words, designed to lead the reader to infer things, warranted or not.
Definitely can’t write things where the reader might infer things. That would be outrageous and uncouth!
Correct. If journalists know something as a fact, they should state it, and share the source of that fact. If they don’t know something, but have a guess, they can say that it’s their own inference.
But to use weasel words to lead the reader to infer things that are not factually supported is, well, not a good look.
If the reader is inferring things, that is a good thing.
Infer
That said, if the article itself is inferring things, one could argue that is a use of weasel words by the publication. However, this is not the case when they give specifics, explaining their qualified statement(s). A qualified statement in and of itself is not “weasel words.”
Infer