{
  "id": "shooting-the-messenger.channel-cut",
  "term": "shooting the messenger",
  "sense": "channel-cut",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "published",
  "level": 16,
  "domain": "agency",
  "style": "folk",
  "definition": "Power used on the one who reports a near wall instead of on the wall, so later reports stop while the drift toward it goes on.",
  "folk_gloss": "blaming or punishing the person who brings bad news instead of dealing with the news",
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "power.over",
      "report.information",
      "wall.range-end",
      "near.spatial",
      "drift.aimless",
      "later.temporal",
      "stop.action",
      "feedback.communication",
      "model.representation",
      "use.application",
      "instead.alternative",
      "time.dimension",
      "toward.spatial",
      "go.movement"
    ],
    "interaction": "The power can reach the reporter but not the wall, so it acts where it can; each reporter struck teaches the others what reports cost. The channel closes, the holder's model stays whole and stops changing, and the parameter it stopped tracking keeps drifting.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "power spent on the instrument instead of the danger",
      "a model kept intact by cutting its inputs",
      "the holder blinds itself using others' fear"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "In Plutarch's Life of Lucullus, Tigranes has the first man to report Lucullus's advance beheaded, after which no one told him anything and he stayed ignorant as the enemy closed in.",
      "domain": "history"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "yes-men.filtered",
      "type": "enables",
      "note": "punished reports teach the rest to report only agreement: the cause of which yes-men are the standing result"
    },
    {
      "id": "denial.refusal",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "denial holds the model still by refusing the reading; shooting the messenger removes the one who would bring it"
    },
    {
      "id": "blind.unobserved",
      "type": "enables",
      "note": "cutting the reporter leaves the parameter with no feedback"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "kill the messenger",
    "killing the messenger",
    "shoot the messenger",
    "shooting the messenger",
    "shoots the messenger",
    "shot the messenger"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "claude-opus-5-5:hand-curated",
    "date": "2026-09-28",
    "confidence": 0.85,
    "sources": [
      "schema/power-agency-phase.md"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-shooting-the-messenger.channel-cut"
}