Topic: The Media
Another Python Speaks
Back on November 9th of last year I reported that according to a story in Reuters - actually reported in a lot of places - my local newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, had ordered its reporters to stop describing anti-American forces in Iraq as "resistance fighters," saying the term romanticizes them and evokes World War II-era heroism.
The ban was issued by Melissa McCoy, a Times assistant managing editor, who told the staff in an e-mail circulated the Monday before that the phrase conveyed unintended meaning - and asked them to instead use the terms "insurgents" or "guerrillas." Apparently the editors got queasy: "[Times Managing Editor] Dean Baquet and I both individually had the same reaction when we saw the term used in the newspaper," McCoy said. "Both of us felt the phrase evoked a certain feeling, that there was a certain romanticism or heroism to the resistance."
But, of course, McCoy said she considered "resistance fighters" an accurate description of Iraqis battling American troops, but it also evoked World War II - specifically the French Resistance or Jews who fought against Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto. "Really, it was something that just stopped us when we saw it, and it was really about the way most Americans have come to view the words."
So the term is quite accurate but - "We are loath to proscribe the use of just about any word, but sometimes certain combinations of words send an unintended signal. You combine these two seemingly innocuous words and suddenly they have this unintended meaning."
The New York Times was following. Allan Siegal, assistant managing editor: "We don't have a policy but when you mentioned the phrase it sounded like romanticizing to me. I don't think it's the kind of cool, neutral language we like to see."
The Washington Post did not follow. David Hoffman, the foreign editor of said his paper had used the phrase "resistance fighters" to describe Iraqi forces and had no objection to the term. "They are resisting an American occupation so it's not inaccurate."
Well times have changed - and one of the old Monty Python troop speaks on this.
See The war of the words
Terry Jones, The Guardian (UK), Friday April 30, 2004
Jones sees the problem as even bigger -
Well, we do not want to seem like we're doing this all alone - because even if the Spanish and a few others have bailed out, the Brits are still with us, not to mention the folks from Fiji and Tonga. It's not just us.One of the chief problems with the current exciting adventure in Iraq is that no one can agree on what to call anyone else.
In the Second World War we were fighting the Germans, and the Germans were fighting us. Everyone agreed who was fighting who. That's what a proper war is like.
However, in Iraq, there isn't even any agreement on what to call the Americans. The Iraqis insist on calling them "Americans", which seems, on the face of it, reasonable.
The Americans, however, insist on referring to themselves as "coalition forces". This is probably the first time in history that the United States has tried to share its military glory with someone else.
But Jones too sees a problem with what we call the Iraqis, besides calling them the Iraqis.
Ah yes, well, these things happen, and have to be... packaged? Yes, carefully.Then there's the problem of what the Americans are going to call the Iraqis - especially the ones that they kill. You can call people who are defending their own homes from rockets and missiles launched from helicopters and tanks "fanatics and terrorists" only for so long. Eventually even newspaper readers will smell a rat.
Similarly it's fiendishly difficult to get people to accept the label "rebels" for those Iraqis killed by American snipers when - as in Falluja - they turn out to be pregnant women, 13-year-old boys and old men standing by their front gates.
It also sounds a bit lame to call ambulance drivers "fighters" - when they've been shot through the windscreen in the act of driving the wounded to hospital - and yet what other word can you use without making them sound like illegitimate targets?
And Jones points out that one of the other key things here is to try to call US mercenaries "civilians" or "civilian contractors", while calling Iraqi civilians "fighters" or "insurgents".
Yep, that works. We do that.
And we try out new terms all the time.
No. It's just vague. But whatever, Jones points to even thornier semantic problems in the last few days, and coming up soon in June.Describing the recent attack on Najaf, the New York Times happily hit upon the word "militiamen". This has the advantage of being a bit vague (nobody really knows what a "militiaman" looks like or does), while at the same time sounding like the sort of foreigners any responsible government ought to kill on sight.
Well, call it "forceful negotiation." And you might click on the link to see what Jones has to say about the words used by the folks in the Oval Office.For example, there's the "handover of power" that's due to take place on June 30. Since no actual "power" is going to be handed over, the coalition chaps have had to find a less conclusive phrase. They now talk about the handover of "sovereignty", which is a suitably elastic notion. And besides, handing over a "notion" is a damn sight easier than handing over anything concrete.
Then again, the US insists that it has been carrying out "negotiations" with the mojahedin in Falluja. These "negotiations" consist of the US military demanding that the mojahedin hand over all their rocket-propelled grenade launchers, in return for which the US military will not blast the city to kingdom come. Now there's a danger that this all sounds like one side "threatening" the other, rather than "negotiations" - which, after all, usually implies some give and take on both sides.
As for the word "ceasefire", it's difficult to know what this signifies anymore. According to reliable witness reports from Falluja, the new American usage makes generous allowance for dropping cluster bombs and flares, and deploying artillery and snipers.
Posted by Alan at 15:55 PDT
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