Speak English updated
This could get a little picky, so be warned. You can’t spend as many years as I have teaching and editing language without becoming a bit of a word nerd. Some of that may surface here.
In my “Speak English” post below, I asked whether Democrats are as bad as Republicans at changing commonly accepted names of things they don’t like to make them sound worse. I cited three examples: Changing Democratic Party to Democrat Party, calling the estate tax the death tax and calling the cap and trade bill the cap and tax bill.
Montana Sentinel responded with counter examples: Using “privatize” to describe Social Security reform proposals, “tax cuts for the wealthy,” climate change for global warming, “Jobs Bill” for stimulus bill, the Employee Free Choice Act, “single-payer” instead of “government funded” and “public option” instead of “government option.”
In my response in comments, I rejected his examples for mostly technical reasons: The alternate terms make useful distinctions in some cases; in others, the alternate wording doesn’t really replace a generally accepted term.
Montana Sentinel says my answer shows my inherent bias toward left-leaning rhetoric. That raises a larger point. Are my biases in fact influencing the way I read these terms? It’s an issue journalists commonly face because they are required all the time to make short-hand distinctions that parties involved often find biased.
When I broke into newspapering, for example, newspapers typically referred to people who opposed abortion as “anti-abortion.” Those who thought abortions should be legal were called, as they are now, pro-choice.
What is now almost universally called the pro-life movement cried foul. But the description seemed accurate to me. Nothing really distinguished people in the pro-life movement except their opposition to abortion. They didn’t necessarily oppose capital punishment, or favor pacifism, or support animal rights. They just didn’t like abortion.
At the same time, you couldn’t fairly call the other side “pro-abortion.” After all, you could believe that abortion is a sin that would condemn you to hell fire and still think the government shouldn’t be involved. I don’t think the government should stop Rush Limbaugh’s radio show; does that make me pro-Limbaugh?
Eventually, newspapers gave up the fight. I’m not sure they were persuaded; I think exhaustion set in. And eventually pro-life became such a commonly used term that everybody knew what it meant anyway.
So these short-hand summaries of political positions do matter. They have to be clear enough to be understandable, neutral enough to avoid a fight and punchy enough to be memorable. “Tax cuts disproportionately for the wealthy” might be more accurate than the alternative Montana Sentinel suggests, but it will never catch on.
So am I blind to my bias here? It honestly never occurred to me until now that “privatization” was considered a negative term. I thought it described Bush’s Social Security proposal pretty accurately, if incompletely, and I didn’t know conservatives would object. Do they, or is Montana Sentinel all alone?
Is single-payer a worse term than government-funded? They are not interchangeable, after all. Single-payer may be a bit obscure, but surely it describes the concept more accurately.
I did not know, frankly, that Tester was calling the stimulus bill a jobs bill, but does his language really obscure what the bill is about? It really is about jobs, isn’t it, at least in large part? Where’s the bias?
“Cap and trade” and “cap and tax” probably are equally obscure, but at least the former term has the advantage of having been in wide use for a few years. When I first encountered cap and tax, I had to gather some context to be sure it was even about the same thing.
The Employee Free Choice Act, obviously, is a loaded term. But both parties name bills in ways that make them look good, and it really has nothing to do with my original point.
Unless my bias is keeping me from seeing that.
July 8th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
It’s very difficult to convey the meaning of our perceptions in words – we mean what we say, but we are interpreted in a different way. It’s even harder when people deliberately try to distort words to appeal to emotions and distort the reality of what they are trying to do.
We cannot discuss the estate tax, for instance. People don’t get it, nor most of all newspaper people who report on it (true of taxes in general). So it’s fertile ground for distortion. Nice little catch phrases like “death tax” work.
This is true of everything meant for mass consumption – it has to be kept very simple – one idea expressed in three or four words. Drill Baby Drill. No new taxes. Death tax.
That’s the definition of propaganda. That’s how it’s done.
July 9th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
David: One correction. “Pro-choice” is not standard usage at most papers. The AP Stylebook says it like this: “Use anti-abortion instead of pro-life and abortion rights instead of pro-abortion or pro-choice.”
I’m not saying some reporters don’t sometimes use “pro-choice” and editors left it go, but we try to follow the AP at the Gazette and I think we’ve been pretty consistent on this one.
July 9th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
“So am I blind to my bias here?” Obviously not. That is why you spent a long time explaining your shortcuts. You are forgiven. Not perfect, just forgiven. Go and sin no more.
July 9th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
July 9th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
Forgot to close the quote.
July 10th, 2009 at 11:12 am
Ed, Is this what I get for using a 23-year-old Stylebook? I can’t find that entry.
July 10th, 2009 at 11:41 am
David: Well, hell. I’ve got the 2004 edition, I just realized.
As for Mark T, just beautiful. You always bring up the example of the story that hasn’t been written, to “prove” that it couldn’t be. When I start covering D.C. politics, maybe I’ll get around to the big story you’ve got on your mind. Sorry you can’t write better than Roger Morris. That’s setting the bar pretty low.
July 10th, 2009 at 11:58 am
NPR this morning listed more, on both sides of the aisle: enhanced interrogation for torture, stakeholder for lobbyist, shared responsibility for mandatory and, of course, toxic assets have been renamed legacy assets.
July 12th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
Oh snap, Eddy! If journalism was all it was cracked up to be, if you guys were anything more than legends in your own mind, you’d be doing more than writing about advertising failed ad campaigns. Wow oh wowsy – Ed exposed the meth campaign. I see forty journalism awards coming your way.
And you do shy away from power. I’ve noticed that about you. Folksy, humorous, and completely harmless. You ain’t never gonna blow up in anyone’s face. You were long ago disarmed. That seems to be what it takes – removal of the fuse.
So when you do start covering DC politics, you’ll do just what you do now – look for people who aren’t terribly powerful, and writing stunning expose’s about them. Then you can comeback here and huddle with the other member of the journalism corp that forgot how to do journalism, and do harmony. You guys feed on each other. Neither of you threatens anyone.
July 12th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
Mark, you are oh, so tiresome.
July 13th, 2009 at 8:13 am
Ah, Mark, the Teflon-coated smugness is still fully intact, I see. My point is simply this — that if you spent 10 minutes in an actual newsroom, it would demolish half the airy notions you’ve picked up from your very deep reading on the subject of journalism. If I ever, in writing a news story, attempted what you do every day — cranking out reams of bullshit unsupported by facts or experience — I’d be fired.
I’d tell you to get down off your high horse, but you’re riding side saddle on a spavined donkey.
July 16th, 2009 at 11:44 pm
David – you define tiresome. You’re self-involved: Witness your ability to read German, oh so interesting to those of us who don’t. Your point is well taken – you’re more than your humble presentations make you out to be. You’re awesome. Isn’t that your point? Isn’t your humility a shield for your hubris? Tiresome. Forgive me. You’re predictable, harmless, threaten no one, wax poetic on occasion, and make for fine compilations of what you consider to be the art of journalism. No one gets hurt. You’ve been defused. yawn.
And Ed, it’s like trying to explain the reasons for discipline to a child. You’re in a position where you either buy in or opt out. You chose to buy in, and allowed yourself to be defused. You threaten no one. You are of no practical use. You’ll never challenge power. Otherwise, you’d be an independent journalist, working on your own, publishing in even less obscure journals, and taking care to be true to your convictions. I’d link you to wiki:convictions, but it’s late.
July 17th, 2009 at 9:56 am
Mark, The internet is a big place. If you don’t like it here, go find someplace where you haven’t yet worn out your welcome.
July 17th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
My point remains the same, despite your tired assertions: 10 minutes in a newsroom — hell, 10 minutes in the real world — would do you a world of good. You’re not defused, you’re a wet firecracker.