Lists of Lies

You can guess the topic that was featured on this one, but I'd like to stay away from that and talk about the journalism cheat of making such lists to begin with. It's a headline driving the story.

I like lists.  In fact, I love lists, and am uncertain whether to classify it as an OCD or Aspie symptom in myself. They organise things into nice piles. They give you the illusion of more control than you actually have over a situation. They create an artificial sense of accomplishment.  My roommate in college used to live by his daily list, and within a few weeks he had settled into a form that read 1. Get up. 2. Brush teeth. 3. Take shower. 4. Get dressed. 5. Have breakfast. 6. Read list.  He was already doing the first five without forgetting already, but found it very satisfying to cross off so many things right away every day.

I carried a yellow legal pad with my to-do list on it the second half of my career. I wrote "Don't Take It Personally" across the top of every page, not because it is the most important advice in the world, but because it is the principle I was most likely to forget in about thirty minutes every day. It was useful, not just an emotional crutch. There were things I could leave off the list if I had thirteen patients or less because I would just remember them, but abbreviations I had to put in if it were more. I've made lists ranking baseball players in history, lists of songs I might sing on stage.  I have nothing against lists.

But it was making my own lists here on the blog that exposed what's wrong with them as a device for publication.  If you are doing a Top Ten, one of two things will happen. You will either have only 7-8 real ones (which is why you mentally estimated there might be ten), and you are stretching to fill the list.  Or, you find that you have too many and have to create a three-way tie for one of the slots in order to fit all twelve in. If you make a list of ten best songs of the 60s, then 70s, then 80s you will very quickly see how artificial all the boundaries are, and that your framing is a mere advertising convenience. 

Top Ten Roman Emperors

Top Ten Sights in New York

Top Ten Bikes in India* 

Ten Best Life Insurance Companies*.

So if it's got the word "list" in the headline, we're already in trouble.  

But I read the list of lies anyway. A few of them were real qualifiers. Yep, those were lies of some sort.  Things that if people didn't know they should have, or have known not to appear so certain when they couldn't be. Maybe three of the ten fit that. Then another four were acceptable if you squinted a bit.  Sure, some people said that but we are making the word "they" do a lot of work here; or some other word besides lie would probably be more accurate, but I take the point. Then lastly, there were three that were almost entirely unfair. In fact, I thought, it's a lie to call that a lie, because you know (or should know) that hardly anyone said it. And that next one is actually based on a true statement, you are just rewording it in exaggerated form. They aren't just padding the total to make a catchier headline, though that is bad enough. They are lying to themselves, and thus to us, about the subject in general. Their list of lies ends up being about 60% true.

Is that worse?

*Those last two are going to be spam-attractors, I'd bet. I got them from auto-complete.