- Going into reverse - 8th September 2025
- Down came the Rayn - 5th September 2025
- Reform minded part two - 5th September 2025
It was essential for our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, to become an expert in the weird and wonderful language of journalism during his 42 year career, and now this is highlighted (bizarrely) by Donald Trump.
You had to get used to new ones all the time.
There was, for instance, the ‘death knock’.
This is when you had to knock on the door of a grieving family member of someone who had died in tragic circumstances (such as a road accident), to talk about him or her, or, ideally about what had occurred.
Occasionally the person wouldn’t actually know what had happened and, well you can guess the rest…
I HATED doing these, and I would lie to the News Editor saying there was no one home, but he (and it always was a ‘he’) would KNOW you were lying so invariably he would respond: “Try the neighbours then”.
One of the most important expressions you had to learn, though, was ‘REVERSE FERRET’.
This is when you would go one way one minute, and then for the next edition of your paper, or transmission of your programme, go in the exact opposite direction.
So, for instance, you might say how awful a person was one day, and present evidence, then say how brilliant he or she was, presenting different evidence!
All of this, oddly, is put centre stage for me by what is happening across the pond with Donald Trump, because at first he might say one thing, but then say the PRECISE opposite.
Let me give you an example.
Several months ago he was basking in the glow of a jobs report produced by the Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS).
With his usual bombast Mr Trump posted on Truth Social: “GREAT JOB NUMBERS, FAR BETTER THAN EXPECTED”.
Last month, however, it was very different.
The BLS announced that employers had added fewer jobs than expected in July; it also revised downward the employment data for the previous two months.
This time Mr Trump turned on the messenger, saying (without evidence) that the figures were “rigged”, he sacked Erika McEntarfer, the BLS commissioner who was confirmed last year on a bipartisan basis, and pledged to appoint a successor who was “much more competent and qualified” so that BLS statistics are “fair and accurate” and “can’t be manipulated for political purposes”.
In other words when figures are good Mr Trump says he was responsible, but when they are bad they are ‘rigged’.
This is ‘reverse ferret’ on a mammoth and extremely damaging scale.
It’s one thing if a media outlet does it about a celeb doing something untoward, but quite another if it is the President of the most powerful country in the world doing it…
The memories of Phil’s extraordinary decades long award-winning career in journalism (when learning the right terminology was paramount), as he was gripped by the rare neurological disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A Good Story’. Order it now.
Tomorrow – how owners of property in Wales which are let out to tenants have condemned as a joke plans to penalise them financially, declaring that politicians are ignoring facts such as the sector providing an essential service bringing in millions of pounds
