The "appear to show" in the piece that Rat posted seems appropriate to me. I would have written it the same way. It's not clear in the documents who is party to the conversation. Later in the piece the author writes: "The new documents also show communications between Rep. Devin Nunes’ aide Derek Harvey and Parnas..." That, appropriately, unlike the former, is an assertion of fact.
Strong statements made that at first look like statements of fact, so strong that one can easily miss the use of these words, and it's these words that tip off me off that the writer is actually expressing his or her opinion. I refer to these words as 'red flags' because they alert me to the possibility that what I'm reading is actually propaganda and not valid evidence of something.
In your previous post, the one to which I responded, you attributed couched language to propaganda. Now you're attributing "strong statements," the exact opposite of couched language, to opinion and then go on to casually equate opinion to propaganda. I cannot follow your argument.
It seems to me that propaganda is most commonly expressed through repetition of bald, casual assertions. They would be neither strong nor couched but matter of fact, to which one would react like, oh, of course. |
