These two articles share lucid and careful use of language:

Unhappy Meals
— Michael Pollan, New York Times Magazine

Protesting the war — not just for giant puppets anymore!
— Alex Koppelman, Slate

The first is a very (!) long exploration of how we have arrived at our present understanding of nutrition and eating. The second is an inevitably much briefer current-events piece on the anti-war protests in Washington from, um, today. They’re worth reading because they are pleasant to read, and that’s nice. They’re worth reading as an example of what good writing looks like. Someday, I’m a gonna do some writing, and I’m interested in that stuff. I mostly write this damn blog because when the time comes, I don’t want to be making a standing start. I’m not that good a writer.

They’re also interesting to read together because they represent different notions about language choice. The protest article is crammed full of loaded language regarding the proper tone for protests to take. If you believe that peace protests should properly be mixed in message and content, the author might be sympathetic to you, but he certainly wouldn’t agree. He believes protests should arrive in town with a sharp central theme and a mainstream-friendly branding. The thing is, he never actually says that. He just implies it in every paragraph. If you read it at all carefully, that thesis is very obvious and I’m sure he’s not actively trying to hide it. However, if you read it as carefully as most people tend to read current-events articles, its possible you would absorb his disdain without recognizing that there is a reasonable opposing side to the issue. The author’s fault? The reader’s? Who knows, but there it is.

Perhaps not coincidentally for an article that is about construction of perceptions through communication, the nutrition article is very careful to identify its intent in relation to the intents of its subjects. As with the protest article, you may agree or disagree with the writer, but in this case you will quickly know what you are agreeing or disagreeing with. There will be no vague feeling of unease. The controversies are obvious. The author uses his superskills to emerge rather than submerge his own voice.

On a related topic, I’m still a little unclear about the use of facts in reportage. I know it’s inevitable that reporters will be selective with the facts they choose to identify, and that this is a separate issue just as important as whether or not they report the selected facts accurately. What bothers me is: are some authors better at flagging the biases they use in selecting their facts? If so, what cues are typically used? I’m not ready to give up on journalistic integrity as being a pleasant fairy tale we tell ourselves as a shield from the howling winds of post modern constructivism and relativism. I’m just not sure how to explain that impulse.

My factual confusion aside, it’s trivially obvious that authors can structure their language to deliver very different impression of the same events. These articles are an interesting test case in with regard to the differences of explicit and implicit biases.