I'm increasingly bugged by a particular behavior by news media: mischaracterization. My case in point today is the common phrasing of changing vaccine recommendations as "puzzling" or "confusing".
Horseshit.
It's about as simple as it gets: as the virus changes so must our response to it. Calling this simple concept "puzzling" is like wondering why the needle on your car's gas gauge moves as you drive.
Another seething pet peeve is the ubiquitous use a "crisis" to describe things that happen every damn day. A "crisis", by definition, is an unexpected, serious, and short-lived event that does require unique resources to resolve, but when it's resolved, it goes away. Calling the immigration situation at the southern border a "crisis" is simply hyperbole. People have been crossing the border for generations. Our government's commitment to handling that situation, though, is variable across decades. That's not a crisis, that's poor public policy.
