Intentionally omitting context in order to mislead is still lying. Communicating with the intent of deception is lying. That's absolutely a common meaning of th

Intentionally omitting context in order to mislead is still lying. Communicating with the intent of deception is lying. That's absolutely a common meaning of the term. Lying: "The sky is hi-vis yellow" Also lying: "Under Biden's EPA—can you believe this, folks?—the sky is blue. Here with us today is a scientist and fellow with the Bullshit Institute for Mercenary Science who will tell us why blue is the worst color for the sky to be, and Paul Ryan to tell us how bad this will be for American families." The latter is a pattern that a lot of Fox News stories follow, to single out just one set of—yes!—liars; omit the context that it's entirely normal for the sky to be blue, suggest that it's a new thing that's a scheme of the current bogeyman and not long-standing policy, and don't even check to see if there are good reasons it's the way it is (or if you do know any, certainly don't mention them). Like, you can sit there and spot these (perhaps with the aid of a smartphone) all day long watching that channel—hey, gotta do something to stay entertained at the parents' house when they leave the damn TV on, tuned to cable news, all day every day, making conversation difficult. Seriously, it's constant, and my made-up version does condense the process but isn't an exaggeration (check out their extensive coverage of "secret nighttime illegal immigrant flights" for an example of the real deal—there was at least one day when that seemed like all they wanted to talk about, and it was a made-up story in exactly this fashion, but was being covered heavily even on the "real news" portions of their programming). These cases are lies. They go beyond making a case for one side, to turning a non-story into a story through lies of omission, entirely on purpose. That's lying. No need to make up facts, in order to lie. ("I argued that, although the media is often deceptive and misleading, it very rarely makes up facts." Yes, sure, OK, but the headline is wrong and he surely knows it—one might say it's a lie. Nb I usually like Slate Star Codex pieces quite a bit, and this one isn't even overall bad, but it's framed more click-baitily than it would be if it were honest, and people going "well ackshually nothing they said was technically false so it's not a lie" is the kind of incorrect pedantry that drives me up a wall)