Are not "intend to mislead" and lying synonyms? Misleading without intent may not be, but if you mislead with intent you are lying.

Lying? Of course not! It's just paid marketing for a sponsor's ideological position! /s

I am not a native English speaker, so my cultural priors might be way off, but I think those two things are quite different. Lying is making statements that the speaker knows are false.

An attempt to mislead is stressing some parts of the actual information and omitting or obfuscating other parts to promote a specific viewpoint. But not actually making false statements. This is literally what most of the layers do much of the time in court.

To me, this is a much lesser evil, as a rational person can detect the spin and probe for missing parts, which is what the judge and opposing lawyers work on.

Lying is a much bigger deal because it is harder to expose through rational exploration. Possible, but requires more external facts. In a court, a spin is a normal part of the defense, but being caught in a lie is likely to doom the case. My 2c.

> those two things are quite different.

Your grasp of English seems fine, to me.

I think your "quite different" distinction is incorrect. The distinction between lying and attempting to mislead isn't a clear one. There's a gradation from plain lying your face off, through mixing in a few truths with your lies, through lying by omission, through presenting true facts in such a way as to make the reader believe falsehoods.

The tactic most-used by newspapers is lying by omission. Newspapers routinely "spike" stories that aren't aligned with the paper's political agenda. You can search the paper's output, and you won't find a direct lie; but a parallel search for truth will also fail. Truth is to be found in the gaps.

"The distinction between lying and attempting to mislead isn't a clear one."

There is if you look up definitions. Lying involves falsehoods. You can mislead someone using selective truths without using falsehoods. That's why the article etc was about misleading, persuading, etc and not mentioning lying (aside from the commentor I originally responded to).

Yep. Lies are not the same thing as being dishonest. You can use lies to be misleading, or manipulative, or dishonest you don't need to, and it's usually more effective if you don't (or at least don't entirely).

If someone can't see how a person could be misleading without lying they're going to fall for a lot of bullshit.

Then what distinction was being made? Knowingly providing an incomplete picture, focusing on one side, or selective editing are intended to misled. They are not "outright lies" nor "counter-factual".

The way I classify them is lying is "outright lies". "intend to mislead" is manipulation. The nuance between manipulation and lies is that manipulation usually distorts a collection of facts through rearrangement, omission or massaging those things to create a view that is not factual, which I think may also relate it as implicit lies. Lying is stating explicitly counter-factual things. I prefer the distinction of using manipulation over implicit lies as I think it communicates the narrower focused maliciousness of it, where lies don't always have that same level of "premeditation", for lack of a better term.

No, there are several contractions here:

> intend to mislead, misinform or persuade the public

persuasion is not misinforming is not misleading.

Hence why they're called out separately.

misleading and misinforming are often used to persuade, but it doesn't always require it.

> intend to mislead

This is literally the definition of lying.

Source? The definitions I saw do not match.

You can intentionally mislead someone through the selective use of truths without using any "counter-factual" or untrue statements.

Google define lie:

* used with reference to a situation involving deception or founded on a mistaken impression. "all their married life she had been living a lie"

Google "define lying". It says this:

tell a lie or lies.

and this

(of a thing) present a false impression; be deceptive.

---

Intentionally misleading is deceptive, even if it states only facts.

Here's one from an actual dictionary.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lying

Google pulls from the OED. Anyway, have fun with ridiculous semantic nonsense - I'm going to go find people who bother to interact in good faith.

I am interacting in good faith. A lie requires a falsehood. There is a difference between a lie and deception - they aren't perfect synonymous. The example from your cited definition is really a poor one since it relies on a saying more than a factual use of the word, and the example itself does imply an actual falsehood in that someone lied during the marriage vows or during the marriage.

But wait, let's look at the instant replay. You claim that lying and deception at the same. So why would you get involved in this conversation to say that? According to you, their use is interchangeable and makes no difference.

If you have something to add to the actual conversation and not about definitions, then please do.

There is concept called a "lie of omission". I did not invent that term - it's older than you and i combined. Intentionally witholding information to deceive a person has long been considered a lie.

There is a difference between telling a lie and being mistaken, no? If you are learning something and give the wrong answer on a quiz, are you lying? Both of those are falsehoods that aren't intending to deceive, and most people wouldn't count those as lies.

The word lie, requires an intent to deceive.

"The word lie, requires an intent to deceive."

This isn't being debated.

"There is concept called a "lie of omission"."

And that's why it's a concept and requires additional words to convey. It's not included by default. This would moee generally fall under deception.

I'll ask again, anything to add to the actual discussion?

There's a couple other concepts I suggest you look into: adjective and category. "Bird of prey" is still a bird no? "Person of interest" is still a person, no? "Box of chocolates", "bag of food", "bottle of whiskey", and "bowl of soup" are all containers no?

Again, anything to add to the actual discussion? Aren't you the one that was complaining about semantics?

Lie of omission is an atypical use and is inconsistent with the definition that I posted earlier. You can cherry pick your definition while ignoring the one I posted and use typical examples that don't correleate to this atypical use that changes the very definition.

If I withhold information from you it may be misleading, but it quite simply is not a lie. Now please stop trolling and actually contribute to the conversation about distrust of the media instead of focusing on the very thing you complained about - semantics.

That’s spin, not lie.

Your source is spinning the definition of lie, for some reason.

It turns out this is a very old discussion. There is a concept called a "lie of omission". Here's a wikipedia page about the entire concept of lies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie

A question for you: if you make a mistake or misunderstand something then share it, are you a liar?

I don't mean like your current actions - the part where you are pretending that you have never encountered the notion of lying like this is clearly itself some sort of lie. I mean like say you apply some math rule incorrectly on a test. Should you be kicked out for lying to the teacher?

To lie is to tell a deliberate falsehood - to say something you know to be untrue. Sometimes this is taken to be acceptable - to tell a "white lie", e.g. in response to, "Does this dress make me look fat?"

Saying something incorrect, but which you believe to be true, is no lie.

The parent comment said:

> it took a few years ... to be come publicized knowledge that the media lied about every war ...

Hmm I do seee that now.