Stop Calling 'Em Terrorists; It Gives Punks Too Much Power

Calling the bomb-makers and other irritating crazy violent people terrorists gives them too much power.

I'm not terrified, are you?

Millions of Americans go about our lives every day, completely not terrified. We may be concerned, especially when we or a loved one boards an airplane.

We may be irritated, annoyed, exasperated, and fed up with these misguided miscreants.

But let's keep some perspective on this.

Calling them terrorists puffs them up with importance. It creates the impression that they hold one of the most powerful nations in the world in emotional bondage.

It suggests that Americans are sheep who are intimidated by a few crazy yahoos.

Let's stop creating a reality that does not exist and giving them credit they do not deserve.

Call them criminals, punks, severely delusional, sociopaths, psychopaths, and -- for the suicide bombers who are underage -- juvenile delinquents.

Believing one is a terrorist may be attractive to some people. Being called international scum, probably not.

Communication and psychology researchers have known for some decades that language constitutes in some part our reality. See, for example, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

Journalists, wise up. Choose the words you use to describe renegade bomb-makers wisely. Diminish them; don't build them up.

I'm not terrified. Are you?

Bad Journalism as Usual: Primaries, Caucuses and Choosing a President in the USA

Pack journalism predominates in television coverage of the Democratic and Republican processes for choosing presidential candidates to run for the country’s top office this fall. Pack journalism starts with always referring to these processes as races, contests, and competitions – the first mystification.

So many academic media analysts have commented on the harmful effects of framing electoral politics using metaphors of war and sports that it seems redundant to mention it. Yet, our numbskull journalists seem not to have read a single serious book about the subject they cover.

The latest pronouncement circulating is that the Republican Party is in disarray because no single, clear winner has emerged after only three decision-making events – a caucus in Iowa, a primary election in New Hampshire, an upcoming caucus in Nevada this weekend with South Carolina primaries to follow. “Republicans want leaders,” Chris Matthews has solemnly decided on NBC, diagnosing a sociological mindset for half a nation without a single social science instrument.

Is it true the Republican Party is in disarray, because the multiplicity of U.S. sentiments is being expressed in these early political processes? I doubt it. The purpose of allowing all of the 52 states to offer their input is to arrive at the decision of party candidates by popular vote this summer – not by polling and pundit prediction based on a few states in January.

Meanwhile, every awkward statement gets blown up out of proportion to its importance, instead of useful comparison of candidates’ positions on heath care, Social Security, financial impetus packages for an economy sliding into decline, and complicated issues related to foreign policy, such as the rise of China and India as competitors in world markets.

Former President Bill Clinton clumsily remarks that candidate Barack Obama’s statements about his consistent opposition to the Iraq War are a fairy tale, and the press convolutes this into a statement that the first credible black candidate’s campaign is a fairy tale. Former Arkansas GovernorMike Huckabee supports South Carolina’s display of a confederate states’ flag, while Senator John McCain decries it. Our feeble journalists run the bytes over and over again: This carnival sideshow is the real news for them.

Few of my students want to read or learn about anything that can’t be Googled and read in four minutes, but most want to be on television. It’s no wonder that I live in a know-nothing society. Journalists focus on the wrong things when covering political processes, and democracy suffers.

Bad Newscasting

A new low for standards for television journalists was reached yesterday when a CNN anchor blithely admitted to a weather reporter, out in hurricane Flossie, that he didn’t know how to pronounce the name of the Hawaiian town from where the report was coming. I can hardly imagine Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Huntley or Brinkley, or any of the venerable newsmen of the past admitting – on camera – that he hadn’t done his homework. I can’t even imagine as a newspaper reporter of far lesser renown having gone out on an assignment without doing my homework.

Another egregious instance was when the Palm Beach Post, in the late 1990s, assigned a reporter to the fashion beat with no background in fashion – a deficiency she joked about in her columns. In a letter to an editor, I complained about how hard it is to teach young journalism students to do research when this is the role model they get. I also pointed out that the Post serves Palm Beach and Wellington, two of the most fashionable locales in the United States. Its readers contribute to a multi-billion-dollar fashion industry. Finally, I asked if the paper would dare send someone with no knowledge of football to report on a game and publish a lame article about how the reporter noticed that there were a bunch of guys tossing a funny-shaped ball around and bumping into each other – and that’s about all he could tell us about it.

The fashion reporter wasn’t on the beat for long, but the lame CNN reporters, with their pretty hair and superficial questions, have been around far too long.

Dan Rather, onetime CBS anchor, rails against the “dumbing down and tarting up of the news.” Pundits have been bemoaning the poor state of network and cable news, but it doesn’t do any good.

Culture of Fear

I remember when thunder storms came, and people got out of the rain. Now, thunder storms are a national emergency, with warnings from the National Weather Service streaming across the television screen. People state that the weather is worse now than it used to be, but I expect that’s not the case.

Not so many years ago, an Associated Press wire report about eight people dead in a tornado in Alabama would have been buried on a back page of the New York Times in a few paragraphs. Many local newspapers wouldn’t have had space to run such a report. Now the 24/7 news cycle places cameras at the scene within minutes.

Yesterday, eight children died in a school in Enterprise, AL, in just such a weather event. But it’s not Armageddon, and we don’t need to cling to our radios in desperate fear of the weather. Scared populations trade freedom for the illusion of security.

Authoritarian leaders have no need to impose dictatorship on the U.S. people. All they have to do is give them Ipods and plasma televisions and keep them hypnotized by streaming disaster news and amused by escapist programs with lots of whoo-hoo screaming. Then, the sheep gladly trade liberty for the prison of safety.