Absolutely Fabulist

“Fabulous” is a word that has become primarily known for meaning great or wonderful or marvelous. But as Webster’s’ online dictionary notes, its primary meaning is:

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resembling or suggesting a fable: of an incredible, astonishing, or exaggerated nature [fabulous wealth]

It’s telling that the synonym that Webster’s recommends for the word is fictitious.

While big media loves to chide blogs for not “making boring commitments” to “covering the news fairly”, increasingly, it’s been known to be pretty wildly inventive itself. Dan Rather and Jayson Blair are the two most well-known proponents of fabulist journalism, but they’re far from alone.

First up via Betsy Newmark, Charles Johnson notes that Reuters has taken a story about twin bus bombings in Israel that actually occurred in September 2004, and presented it as if it happened just this past week.

Meanwhile, VodkaPundit’s Will Collier observes the Boston Globe inventing a story about a seal hunt in Canada that never actually happened.

Finally, Mark Steyn notes another Reuters piece that’s so wrapped up in its boilerplate conclusions that it can’t even locate an excellent reality check on who’s winning in Iraq:

In between their Bridges-Of-Madison-County imagery and Horse-Whisperer narrative devices the Western media somehow managed to lose the story

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