There is nothing so deceptive as an obvious fact.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the Adventures o Sherlock Holmes.

Discussion 1 Work with a partner and discuss the following questions.

a Is it important in your job to have access to the most up-to-date information?

Why (not)?

b Where do you get most of the information you need to do your job?

cWhich of the following sources of information are the most reliable?

the Internet newspapers magazines trade/academic journals TV news company reports specialist news agencies like Reuters opinion polls and surveys end-of-year accounts market research TV viewing figures government statistics scientific studies the grapevine

2 You are going to read an extract from Great Mytbs of Business by the journalist and self-made millionaire William Dais. First match the following words and expressions to what they mean.

a a mixed blessing d have a vested interest in …ing

ba spin doctor e hearsay

cget the wrong end of the stick f a myth

something believed by many but in fact untrue

completely misunderstand something

something that has disadvantages as well as advantages

something you’ve heard people say which may or may not be true

someone whose job is to make people or organisations look as good as

possible

want things to happen in a particular way because it will benefit you

3Now read the extract. How far do you along with the argument it’s

presenting?

Information –

A mixed blessing

any people seem to find it difficult to accept that the information they get may be unreliable. It does not come out of nowhere: someone, somewhere, has had to put it together. That someone

	may have got the wrong end of the stick, or made use of hearsay, or deliberately set out to mislead. Public relations people, for example, often put out press releases, which are little more than sales promotion. They can easily create a false impression.
	Information is slanted, twisted, misrepresented. Achievements may be exaggerated and awkward facts may be sppressed. In politics, ‘spin doctors’ are experts in dissembling. In business too, there are many specialists who have a vested interest in
	ensuring that everything a company does is presented in a favourable way. My own profession is not without blame. Journalists frequently print stories which turn out to be inaccurate and TV programmes give a distorted
	picture of what is happening in various parts of the world . It is dangerous to read newspapers casually. That’s how the germ of a myth is planted. The next thing you know, it has grown into a fact. A glance at a headline, a swift scan of the introduction, a note of the
	picture caption, and you are on your way to a firmly held misconception.

Look back at the text in 3 and words or expressions meaning:

a make someone believe something which is untrue (paragraph 1)__

b embarrassing pieces of information (paragraph 2)______ _______

c hidden from the public (paragraph 2)____________

d present something inaccurately (paragraph 2 and 3)

__________ a _________ ____________

e a wrong belief or opinion (paragraph 3)_____________

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 1004

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