I remember learning in my journalism classes that a reporter working for a generic city newspaper (Kansas City Star for example), is told to write at a 4th grade level. Keep your sentences short, words simple, etc.
Today's journalists take much greater liberties with their sentence structures and the words they use. The intelligent reader can still pick out the "news content" from the ever increasing amount of fluff surrounding it, but your average reader simply cannot. Journalists know this, and have become rather adept at using subtle synonyms and illicit slights of hand to gently nudge their readers in a particular direction.
A simple but apt example: the word "terrorist" has the word "terror" in it. Even simpletons know what terror is. "Militant" requires they find out what they are being militant ABOUT, if the reader even knows or cares.
Brian
----- Original Message -----
From: Jim Davis
To: CF-Community
Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2004 9:39 AM
Subject: RE: They're Terrorists - Not Activists
<snip>
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.
<snip>
[Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings] [Donations and Support]
