US News & World Report is a hard-right magazine that appeals to the Rush Limbaugh crowd. They are pretty consistent in supporting all of the religious-right and conservative Republican causes.
USA Today is a nationwide newspaper that tries to be as apolitical and inoffensive as possible, covering more than just one perspective on their editorial page.
Compare these two recent headlines covering the same bit of news:
"Study: Hospice patients feel abandoned by doctors" - USA Today
"Dying Feel Abandoned by Docs in the End" - US News & World Report
The USN&WR writer feared that most of his readers would not know what the word "hospice" means, and had to replace it with a weird substitution, "dying". Certainly hospice patients are in a bad way, but they are not going to die this very day, are they?
Abbreviating doctors as "docs" adds a weird levity to the situation, as if it's all a big joke, like Bugs Bunny saying, "What's up, Doc?" To me, this betrays the emotional disconnect within the thought processes of right-wingers. They simply don't care about people, and it shows in their choice of words.
Why should the "dying," as USN&WR puts it, feel abandoned just in the end? Why not in the beginning or the middle? In the end, hospice patients feel nothing at all. Think about it.
Should we be surprised that conservatives digest the dumbed-down journalism of USN&WR? I am. Maybe I shouldn't be, but I am. I don't know how they can stand it.
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