National Review is an interesting phenomenon; it's one of the few remaining loud conservative voices that hasn't drunk the Trump Tang. Over at the Post, columnists George Will and Charles Krauthammer have retreated a bit from their pre-election anti-Trump tone. I'm reluctant to slam them on this; others won't be shy about it, of course, but I don't plan to forget how Will and Krauthammer stuck their necks out several times a week during Trump's candidacy.
To their credit, National Review is sticking to their story. A recent appeal to subscribers addressed them this way:
"You represent a broad spectrum of opinion about our president-elect: Some of you are devoted Trump supporters who "forgive" us; some of you are reluctant Trump supporters who appreciated seeing our various writers grapple with the Trump phenomenon in real time and so honestly; some of you are still Trump skeptics."
I haven't read any of the anti-Trump pieces they refer to here; but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. NR is one of many print media veterans desperately trying to figure out how to evolve in our post-print world. After thirty seconds of effort, I lost patience trying to access their archived stories. To put it in perspective, the New Yorker frustrated me for years with their various bunglings and missteps in this area, but their current online presence is greatly improved, to the point where it's now difficult to STOP reading New Yorker articles. Possibly the liberal elites who read the New Yorker have sped past their conservative brethren in this regard; I'm still trying to help my dad learn how to use his cell phone, but that's anecdotal evidence at best.
A leisurely stroll through the current issue turned up a couple articles of interest. "The Media's Dishonest Reporting on Firearms" calls out the Associated Press for letting ideology corrupt their style book. The phrase "illegal immigrants" is verboten now at AP, and frankly in this instance I can see NR's point. Insisting on switching "illegal" out for "undocumented" could be described as Orwellian, with its implication that inefficient bureaucracy is what we're dealing with here, and not lawbreaking. I have no emotional quarrel with these immigrants, whatever we choose to call them, and in fact in the abstract they have my admiration and respect, for the crazy risks they've taken to feed themselves and their families, but I don't feel the need to change my language to hobble a stigma that is based on truth. It does seem worth pointing out, though, that both sides play this game. A friend of mine who was a journalist at a right wing paper in the 1980s told me his editor would cross out "guerilla" and write "freedom fighter" when he forgot about the party line. (Don't quote me on the "guerilla," that was a long time ago, and I'm probably recalling the offending word incorrectly.)
In fact, as a side note, it's important to point out that both American political philosophies insufferably romanticize "law and order" when they like the law, and likewise romanticize lawbreaking when they don't. Anyone who doesn't know that already won't learn more about it from me today, as my new Tangent Alarm phone app just went off. (When I wander away from my point for too long, my phone plays a live Cream album until I get back on track. I'm thinking of changing the setting to Deep Purple Live in Japan, but that's a tangent on top of a tangent.)
But NR shifts away quickly from this point about immigration coverage to tarring newspapers in general for hypocrisy regarding gun references. I'll spare you the specifics, as they are numerous, but the gist of it is that terms like "assault rifles" and "AK47" are misleading and therefore bad journalism. Apparently, the people who buy guns to murder Americans use a much broader spectrum of deadly weapons than these newspaper-accepted terms suggest. The implication is that anti-gun bias fuels this kind of reckless disregard for the truth, and I think that case can be made. But their level of indignation about this reminds me of the tone comic book fan boys adopt when zinging someone for not being sufficiently knowledgeable about Green Lantern's personal life.
It may be that murderers rely much less on this murderous weapon or that than "the media" tells us. And I don't doubt that, with effort, a long list of errors about specific life-ending brand names and human-killing models used by specific murderers could be compiled. The number of incidents involving murderers and guns is huge, so the number of journalistic errors about them is presumably only slightly less huge.
I've been misquoted by newspapers, and I've had to read wrong things printed about my music that could have been easily corrected with a phone call, so I'm not going to pretend that journalistic laziness doesn't annoy me. And it isn't always laziness; I recall a phone interview where a music critic was clearly pushing me to make certain qualitative judgments about the New York Dolls and the Sex Pistols that were in line with his taste. That was very irritating, and perplexing to me as I'd assumed he was interviewing me rather than me interviewing him. Another time a cable tv host got in my face about Mott the Hoople. I'm a big fan, and there are worse things to be browbeaten about, but that guy had Hoople on the brain. Dangerous Hoople levels, it seemed to me at the time, but back then we didn't know as much as we now know about Hoople Syndrome.
That being said, it seemed curious to me that NR mentions this particular issue in the same context as their handful of examples about ideology-driven language. Except in the headline where the word "dishonest" is used, the writer never explicitly accused papers of anything more than slackness, but it was hard to escape the implication. Recently the NYT has said they are reluctant to use the word "lie" to describe the endless flow of non-true statements from our President-Elect, and for a reason I actually respect-- to call something a lie is to claim mind-reading ability, because a lie is a willful act of deception. Many will roll their eyes at this, but of course it cuts both ways. "Dishonest" implies a deliberate attempt to mislead. Perhaps that's a reasonable accusation, but National Review didn't even attempt to back it up in the piece. At the end of the article, the author tipped his hand a bit with what appeared to be humor. He suggested that if we are expected to be accurate about "27 genders," journalists should do their job and accurately describe all murderous weapons used in mass murder, and presumably also in regular old
one-corpse-at-a-time murder too. Maybe, but does that mean we need to know whether someone was drinking rail or the cheap stuff before he ran over a slow-moving granny, or whether a serial killer's van was white, or eggshell? Moreover, the "27 genders" thing seems like a straw man to me; I have tolerance and even love for the LBGTQ community, but while I remain cheerily available for anyone who wants to educate me on the quotidian specifics of the gender smorgasbord, I won't deny that my interest level is only slightly higher than my need to know all the actors who have played Doctor Who. And so far, I've never been called out for this; generally my conversations with LGBTQ guys, gals, and what-have-you have been about the same things straight people talk about, like who needs more wine, etc.
My son recently had a conversation with a fellow middle school student whose gender was a word I hadn't heard of and have since forgotten. He was frustrated at how complicated it all was, and I could understand how he felt, given that just figuring out what it means to be a straight boy is challenging enough. I told him to be kind and treat people with different sexual orientations the same way you treat everyone else, and I think they'll be happy with that. It's not like the periodic table of elements, where you'll be tested on it later.
No comments:
Post a Comment