Jeff Jacoby has a good column on the subject in the Boston Globe:
. . . Consider how the illegal procedure was identified in news accounts of last week’s [abortion law] ruling: . . .
National Public Radio: “Partial-birth abortion is a term used by opponents for what doctors call intact dilation and extraction.”
Washington Post: “The ban on the procedure that critics call ‘partial birth abortion’ was already on hold temporarily as three courts heard legal challenges to it.”
NBC: “A federal judge declared the so-called ‘partial birth abortion’ act unconstitutional on Tuesday.” . . .
Why the circumlocutions? In journalism, short and clear is better than long and wordy; reporters generally don’t have the space or time to reach for periphrastic phrasings when something more direct is available. Yet when it comes to partial-birth abortion, many of them suddenly feel compelled to distance themselves from a familiar and straightforward term. Why?
The answer most journalists would give, I imagine, is that they are just being accurate. “Partial-birth abortion” isn’t a proper medical term, they would argue — the phrase was originally coined by prolife activists and it’s appropriate to point out the political baggage it comes with.
Which is fair enough — but only if the same standard applies across the board. “Choice” and “the right to choose,” the most common euphemisms for abortion, aren’t medical terms either. They come straight out of the abortion-rights lexicon, which adopted them for their favorable connotation. . . .
For that matter, when was the last time a news report spotlighted the political provenance of any label *other* than “partial-birth abortion?” After all, it isn’t only in the abortion wars that terminology can have partisan overtones. If it’s a matter of good journalism to call attention to the fact that a phrase tends to favor those on one side of a controversial issue, shouldn’t reporters be more fastidious about using terms like “campaign finance reform” or “the gun lobby?” Shouldn’t they point out the implicit bias in referring to only some violent offenses as “hate crimes?”
When legislation to ban guns bearing certain cosmetic features is proposed, journalists should note that the measure would restrict “what opponents call ‘assault weapons,’ a term not used by weapons experts, who say it has no clear meaning.” When reporting on the same-sex marriage controversy, they should observe that “what critics call ‘homophobia’ — a term promoted by gay and lesbian activists — is not recognized by medical authorities.” . . .
There are often no convenient politically neutral labels for some things; advocates on all sides often try to convey their political message by embedding it in seemingly objective terminology; it can indeed be helpful for journalists to alert readers to this; and at the same time journalists can’t do this for all terms, so it will have to select which terms it will flag this way.
But, as Jacoby points out, the journalists’ selection decisions do tell you quite a bit about the journalists’ political prejudices — and about how these prejudices can affect supposedly objective reporting.
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