If we're told:
"Militants opened fire on an elementary school reportedly killing 60
students."
How is that different from:
"Terrorists opened fire on an elementary school reportedly killing 60
students."
Does using the "terrorist" label make the act (or the impression of it)
worse? Does using several labels throughout a longer piece (as nearly every
writer does) sanitize the act? The term "militant" is, in and of itself,
less biased, true, but it's not the term in and of itself that's used.
These militants murder children: that says more than any label ever could.
(Note that I've no problem at all with the term "terrorist" being applied -
it definitely fits. I don't want you to think that I'm arguing it's not
appropriate.)
I agree completely that using positive-leaning terms for such people is
propagandist (although not at all uncommon). A term like "freedom fighter",
for example, is clearly positively loaded and shows an obvious, irrational
bias. In other words there's definitely a spectrum of possible terms which
by themselves can lean in many possible directions. The possible terms
cover vulgar, negative, positive, silly and everything inbetween. That's
why the content of the story is so important.
Changing the content of the story could change its context completely.
Considering the following:
"Militants liberated a government building. Some casualties were reported."
In both the first an last the term "militants" describes the group (an armed
band) but the second vastly skews the meaning of the story placing it in an
unabashedly positive light.
This isn't personal, or specific to this issue, for me. I'm always wary of
those that want to see labels homogenized. If we really did use the term
"terrorist" as much as the Sun article implies we should I fear that the
term would soon lose all meaning and become trivialized (In fact I think
that this administration has already done this to a large extent). It may
also eventually cause the term to take a positive light.
You mentioned the term "rebels" and how it reminded one of the American
Revolution. This is a clear example where in our culture we have tuned than
negative term into a positive one. The rest of the world may not consider
"rebel" such a positive term however.
It just reminds me too much of the politically correct movement. Changing
language doesn't change feelings. As the Sun article said: it's not a
matter of definition, it's a matter of knowing it when you see it. Anybody
that reads the first line above and doesn't condemn the act isn't going to
read the second and condemn it because the label changed.
Jim Davis
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