beastie had more but the goddamned holy ghost sent em to /dev/null during the board upgrade...
Unbelievably, I actually had the foresight to save my post to review in case I order and read the book. So here's the rerun:
During the interview the authors said the cue word to begin firing was “halt”. He left out “do your duty”. Is this an important or deliberate omission? I think it’s an important omission but may not be deliberate, just an effect of his bias. “Do your duty” is important because it helps reveal the motives, which were connected to religious duty. It’s this type of language, in combined with what you note as well, that does result in a conveyance of information that is just biased enough to be slightly misleading.
The authors commented on Lee’s relationship with Brigham Young being “overplayed”. They didn’t really affirm that the relationship was overplayed, but by bringing it up without debunking the notion that it was overplayed, they definitely left the impression that it was overplayed. I think that was misleading, as everything I’ve read indicated that BY and Lee were very close.
The interviewer had the impression from the book that the behavior of the Fancher party was a “factor”. The authors did state that the behavior was exaggerated and more to the point of assuaging guilt. However, I think that this verifies the point made earlier by James Miller that the authors did convey this information in a way that could leave the impression that there was bad behavior on the part of the Fancher party that triggered the event.
These things may not seem very significant when viewed in isolation. Does it really matter that they avoided the word “Mormon” in describing the settlers? Does it really matter that they left out “do your duty”? Does it matter that they opened the door to the idea that Lee’s relationship with BY were overplayed? Does it matter that they presented the information about the rumors in such a way that could lead readers to conclude there was something to the rumors? I think it does matter.
Did they do any of this deliberately? I doubt it. But it demonstrates the potential hazards of attempting to construct an “objective” history of an event when you have been paid to construct that history by an organization that has been implicated in the event.