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have bought a Blazer and are intent on discovering how the four-wheel
40 drive system works. Here is part of what you will learn: «The system has a transfer case with synchronized
input shaft, and a differential unit with central locking cluch and connect/disconnect control.»
Or what if you glance at the section on operating the defroster?'Your appalled eye will come on this:
45 «The windshield defrosting and defogging system provides visibility through designated areas of the
windshield during inclement weather conditions.»
«The 1990 Buick Le Sabre Owner's Manual» is strikingly different. None of it applies only to light
50 trucks or only to some other kind of Buick. All of it is about the LeSabre. Better yet, virtually all of it is
readable. Have to change a flat? «The equipment you'll need is in the trunk.» Ah, but suppose you've never
touched a jack in your life, aren't even sure what one looks like. The manual is prepared. It expected that. It
55 contains 26 color photographs that sequentially picture the changing of a tire. (The first two are cameo shots
of the jack and of the wheel wrench.) Each action shot is accompanied by simple directions. Typical
direction: «Take off the nuts. Keep them near you.» A visiting Martian, if taught English and given the
manual, could probably change a LeSabre tire.
60
The most surprising thing in either manual, though, is the acknowledgement that Buicks and Blazers do
not exist in a vacuum — that they move through the air of this planet and are quite capable of polluting it.
65 Both contain a piece of formal advice from General Motors: mix 10 percent ethanol with your gasoline, if
you possibly can, because this will «contribute to cleaner air.»
But here, too, LeSabre is ahead. Both manuals also urge you not to pour your used motor oil down a
70 drain or dump it on the ground. The S-10 manual doesn't say why; it just says don't do it. But the brave,
though anonymous, author of LeSabre gives a reason. «Used oil can be a real threat to the environment», the
manual forthrightly says.
When Buick manuals begin to express concern for the environment, can spring be far behind?
Exercise:
1. What makes the Buick manual better than the Chevrolet?
2. In what way/s are both better than previous manuals?
WHAT IS A JOURNALIST'S «FACT»?
by Claud Cockburn
To hear people talking about the facts you would think that they lay about like pieces of gold ore in the
Yukon days waiting to be picked up — arduously, it is true, but still definitely and visibly — by strenuous
5 prospectors whose subsequent problem was only to get them to market.
Such a view is evidently and dangerously naive. There are no such facts.Or if there are.they are
meaningless and entirely ineffective; they might, in fact, just as well not be lying about at all until the
10 prospector — (the journalist) — puts them into relation with other facts: presents them, in other words. Then
they become as much a part of a pattern created by him as if he were writing a novel. In that sense all stories
are written backwards — they are supposed to begin with the facts and develop from there, but in reality
15 they begin with a journalist's point of view, a conception, and it is the point of view from which the facts are
subsequently written.
All this is difficult and even rather unwholesome to explain to the layman, because he gets the
20 impression that you are saying that truth does not matter and that you are publicly admitting what he long
ago suspected, that journalism is a way of "cooking" the facts. Really cunning journalists, realizing this, and
anxious to raise the status of journalism in the esteem of the general public, positively encourage the layman
25 in his mistaken views. They like him to have the picture of these nuggety facts lying about on maybe frozen
ground, and a lot of noble and utterly unprejudiced journalists with no idea whatever of what they are
looking for scrabbling in the ironbound earth and presently bringing home the pure gold of Truth.
Exercise:
The above passage was written by a well-known journalist about the nature of a Journalist's work.
I (A) Cockburn tells us that people commonly believe that the facts that become part of a Journalist's article
are like the pieces of _______that ______________(s) once found «lying about on maybe frozen ground» (1.