AP should not stop with ‘illegal immigrants’

Posted on Saturday, 04.06.13
The Oppenheimer Report

AP should not stop with 'illegal immigrants'
By Andres Oppenheimer

The fact that the Associated Press news agency decided to ban the term
"illegal immigrant" and replace it with "undocumented immigrant" last
week is a big victory for fairness in journalism, but there are other
terms used daily in the media that should be revised as well.

Before we get to them, let's make it clear that we are talking about
expressions that should be used in straight news stories, as opposed to
opinion columns — such as this one — where journalists should enjoy a
greater flexibility to play with words to express their personal feelings.

As we have been writing here for several years, the term "illegal
immigrant" is unfair and demeaning, because no human being is "illegal."
A driver who speeds is not an "illegal driver," nor is a person who
doesn't pay the rent an "illegal tenant." At long last, the new AP
Stylebook recognizes that there are illegal actions, not illegal people.

Even worse is the use of the word "illegals" as a noun, which
dehumanizes undocumented immigrants and paints all of them as dangerous
criminals. Fox News and other immigrant-allergic news outlets still use
"illegals'' all the time.

"There are other terms, such as "chain migration,'' or "'anchor
babies,'' or "'the flood of immigrants,'' that are used every day in the
press, despite the fact that the number of undocumented immigrants has
fallen in recent years,'' says Kathryn Vargas, a spokeswoman for the
National Immigration Forum advocacy group. "These terms are loaded with
hostility, and take the human face out of the immigration debate."

But there are other terms that are used daily in the media, such as "gun
control,'' that also deserve closer scrutiny.

When we in the media publish headlines about the "gun control" debate,
we are indirectly buying the National Rifle Association (NRA) pro-gun
lobbying group's argument that all proposed gun regulations to reduce
mass killings are efforts to violate the U.S. Constitution's second
amendment, which guarantees people's right to bear arms.

Instead of talking about the "gun control" debate, we should be talking
about the "gun violence" debate. Incidentally, the U.S. Constitution
guarantees the right to bear arms, but it doesn't say we have the right
to have semi-automatic rifles.

Or take a much more common journalistic practice: identifying all
presidents, including dictators who have not allowed a free election in
decades, as "President," or "leader."

I have always wondered why we insist on describing Cuba's dictator Gen.
Raúl Castro, or North Korea's dictator Kim Jong-un, as the "Cuban
leader," or the "North Korean leader," just like I never understood why
we kept calling late Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet during his
years in power as "the Chilean leader."

There is no dictionary in the world that would not define these three
characters as dictators. For the record, my Google dictionary defines
"president" as "the elected head of a republican state," and dictator as
"a ruler with total power over a country."

(I'll tell you a little secret: many U.S. news organizations won't call
ruling despots as "dictators" until they die, because they don't want
their reporters to be denied visas to enter these totalitarian states.)

Which brings me to the mother of all contentious terms, which is not
being questioned by virtually anybody in the United States, but has long
generated a lot of resentment from Latin Americans and Canadians — the
term "America."

"America,'' or "the Americas,'' is the Western Hemisphere. When Columbus
discovered the New World, his first stops were The Bahamas and Cuba, not
Boston. In fact, the first known references to the term "America''
referred to South America, in honor of explorer Americus Vespucius.

When I mentioned this to my friend Edward Wasserman, dean of the
University of California-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, he
laughed and recalled that his Spanish teacher in Argentina used to
object even to his use of the term "norteamericano,'' and urged him to
call himself ''estadounidense."

"You are right, the term ''American'' has overtones of cultural
arrogance,'' Wasserman said. "We don't even have a term for
'estadounidense' in English."

My opinion: We should not move toward an overly politically correct
journalistic lingo that ends up depriving most terms of much of their
meaning (I still prefer "handyman" or "handywoman'' to "handyperson.'')
But language defines the message, and language is an evolving phenomenon.

It was about time that the AP — where I worked for several years —
adopted "undocumented immigrants." I don't think I will see the AP
replacing "America'' with "the United States,'' or "USA,'' in my
lifetime, but I would be content if I see it at least moving from "gun
control'' to "gun violence'' in the near future.

Read more here:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/04/06/v-fullstory/3325845/ap-should-not-stop-with-illegal.html#storylink=cpy