Word: falsehood
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...people believed the President last summer when he pronounced Clarence Thomas the most qualified man for the Supreme Court and asserted that racial considerations had nothing to do with his nomination. In an even more blatant falsehood, Bush said he had forbidden all high-level exchanges with China after the 1989 Tiananmen massacre -- even as he secretly sent his top foreign policy aide to meet with Beijing's leaders...
...anonymous sources, Adams appealed to fair play and to a growing opinion, even among journalists, that reporters place far too much faith in people unwilling to back up what they say. Often, unnamed sources seek to advance some personal agenda. Sometimes they tell lies and lend extra credence to falsehood by peddling it as top-secret truth. While Adams' abrupt withdrawal, at the end of a weekend during which he had raised $130,000 for his campaign, seemed like a tacit admission of guilt, he insisted that in his case the allegations -- which range from uninvited fondling of women...
...like a hyperbolic inventory of life in certain neighborhoods of the late 20th century: "This is a sewer to which all the filths of the universe come to be reunited. Here people despise God, they adore money, they trample underfoot both human laws and divine law. Everything here breathes falsehood: the air, the earth, the houses, and above all, the bedrooms...
...Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, meanwhile, a moderate administration and faculty have faced off against a conservative board. Under a compromise reached three weeks ago, tenured faculty will keep their jobs, but future teachers will be required to profess that the Bible is "free from all falsehood, fraud or deceit...
Despite all the fuss, the issue doesn't seem very complicated. "X said Y" is a factual assertion. If X didn't say Y, it is a false assertion. But falsehood is just one part of a libel case. You have to prove the falsehood was defamatory. You have to prove you've been harmed. These constraints will take care of most of the nightmare scenarios journalists worry about, such as being sued for "cleaning up" quotes. Above all, if X is a public figure, you have to prove the misquote was committed with "reckless disregard for the truth...