“Many” journalists simply make stuff up

This article[*1] on Slate.com talks about the sloppy journalistic practice of using the word “many” to steer a story in the editorial direction the writer/editor/publisher prefers:

when a reporter pours a whole jug of weasel-words into a piece, as Louise Story does on Page One of today’s (Sept. 20) New York Times in “Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood,” she needlessly exposes one of the trade’s best-kept secrets for all to see. She deserves a week in the stockades. And her editor deserves a month.
. . .
I suspect a Times editor glommed onto the idea while overhearing some *censored*tail party chatter—”Say, did you hear that Sam blew hundreds of thousands of dollars sending his daughter to Yale and now she and her friends say all they want in the future is to get married and stay at home?”—and passed the concept to the writer or her editors and asked them to develop it.

So that’s the kind of craft you learn in journalism school? Sounds like fun, let’s give it a try . . .