Friday, July 14, 2017
AP: Journalists Should Avoid Using Words ‘Pro-life,’ ‘Terrorist,’ or ‘Migrant’ In News Stories
The Associated Press Stylebook, published by the Associated Press to provide reporting and language guidelines for journalists, has released a 2017 version that instructs journalists to refrain from using terms like "pro-life," "migrant," "refugee," "Islamist" and "terrorist” in their writing.
In her July 9 article, “How the AP Stylebook censors 'pro-life' and other conservative words,” published in The Hill, Rachel Alexander points out the obvious bias in the AP Stylebook.
“More often than not, style writers have been more interested in censoring conservative words while promoting language that liberals tend to favor,” said Alexander. “That's been especially true of the AP Stylebook published by The Associated Press. It's unfortunate, because that's the guide most journalists rely upon.”
Alexander points out that the Stylebook instructs journalists to change "pro-life" to "anti-abortion," because the AP Stylebook says to "[u]se anti-abortion instead of pro-life and pro-abortion rights instead of pro-abortion or pro-choice.”
The Stylebook also says to avoid using the term abortionist because it “connotes a person who performs clandestine abortions.”
When it comes to words regarding terrorism, the Stylebook instructs journalists to use the terms “Militant,” “lone wolves,” or “attackers” instead of “terrorist” or “Islamist.”
The Stylebook also suggests that instead of using the term “migrant” or “refugee,” "people struggling to enter Europe” should be used.
In addition, the Stylebook deemed the terms "Illegal immigrant" and "undocumented" as unacceptable.
"The mainstream media claim that it's not biased, but it's got this bias built into its own words, and we're seeing these words increasingly scrubbed from news articles and replaced by politically correct words instead,” Alexander said during a Fox & Friends appearance on Tuesday.
“It's a bias against conservatives, and it's getting worse every year,” she said.
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Someone has been reading 1984 again, not as a warning, but as a "how to" manual.
‘Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we’re not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there’s no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It’s merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won’t be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak,’ he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction. ‘Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?’
…
‘The proles are not human beings,’ he said carelessly. ‘By 2050— earlier, probably— all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron— they’ll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like “freedom is slavery” when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking— not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.’
— Orwell, George. 1984
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