One of the quirks of news reporting that amuses me most is when things are “hailed a success”. It a lovely phrase to report on all sorts of projects, especially where the success or failure conditions weren’t laid out before-hand or, in my suspicious mind, for projects that the numbers show weren’t that successful at all. Big government or quango projects get this treatment a lot.
Because “hailed a success” just means that someone said it, not that anything actually succeeded. Often the person doing the hailing is the organiser, minister, councillor, officer or administrator responsible. how convenient.
I wish I had the time to check for actual success every time the phrase comes up, or the technical nous to make it happen automatically – it would make a great failcamp project. For now I’m contenting myself with a little Google News search for the phrase, so I can giggle at the most outrageous collusion.
From the graph it seems that success peaked in 2004.
Whilst it does look like you're right about 2004, does anyone really use the phrase “hailed a success”?
I would have thought the more conventional phrase is “hailed as a success”.
Which also peaked in 2004.
Interestingly “hailed as success” indicates a massive dip in 2004.
There you go.
I think you tend to lose the “as” in headlines. This is a combined search that dos indeed suggest that the world has steadily got less successful since 2004: http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=%22haile…