Bias, Modifiers and Jargon.

The objectivity of the American media is a topic of ongoing dispute. News outlets that promote themselves as "trusted," or disinterested often produce material that contains an identifiable slant. The easiest way to identify this when it occurs is to examine the copy for adverbs and adjectives. Consider for example, this fictitious report of an automobile accident:

"A white pickup truck traveling at an excessive speed carelessly collided with a small sedan, causing horrific injuries to three people. Onlookers attempted to pull the injured victims, including a child from the heartbreaking scene."

The objective substance of the report can be succinctly stated as "Three people were injured when a pickup collided with another vehicle. Onlookers assisted those injured in the crash."

The modifiers in the first version; "excessive," "carelessly," "small," "horrific," "heartbreaking;" convey the subjective interpretations of the writer and therefore convey the biases of the writer.  A very common version that appears in mainstream media are the modifiers "controversial" and "bold." When a speaker, typically a public figure of some sort makes a statement of which the reporter approves, the accompanying, though unnecessary adjective is likely to be "bold," or some related term meant to enhance the power of the statement. Conversely, "controversial," when applied to the same statement conveys a subtle implication that the statement should only be accepted cautiously. Reporters and editors betray their biases in their choice of modifiers.

An analogous concept applies to many of the prevalent doctrines that are presented as though they are serious academic principles. In this case however, rather than being subjective opinions conveyed as superfluous modifiers, the issue is fallacies being masked by jargon. This is frequently seen in the neologisms and attempts to redefine words to have idiosyncratic meanings with the context of a particular discussion. Examples are "fragility," "misinformation," "systemic racism," "equity," etc. The issue is not that the terms are misleading, or necessarily refer to ideas and claims that are false, but that they are often used to obscure fallacious reasoning, and limit rational discussion by injecting subjective and emotional considerations when these have the effect of impairing rational discussion. A fallacy expressed in jargon is still a fallacy.