Tuesday, January 06, 2004
Good Morning, Miami!
And welcome aboard!
Kudos to the Miami Herald for drawing some good distinctions, and taking a stand for precise language.
I do have one small quibble--I don't think the term "resistance fighter" is neutral at all. If I were king--or editor of much of anything except this blog--I'd steer my Iraq crew toward the most precise language possible: Former regime loyalists, Fedayeen elements, Saddam loyalists, foreign fighters, Al Qaeda-linked operatives, etc.
If the motivations are unknown, I would steer toward the term "insurgents."
I do agree with the Herald, though, that the term "terrorism" should be reserved for those acts which deliberately target noncombatants.
Splash, Out
Jason
(Thanks to Ranting Profs for finding the article before I did. The site's run by a communications professor at Univ. North Carolina. I don't reference too many blogs because bloggers do too much of that, anyway. But if you like the pure-drop 'media junkie' pieces from this site, your very next stop should be Ranting Profs.)
Kudos to the Miami Herald for drawing some good distinctions, and taking a stand for precise language.
I do have one small quibble--I don't think the term "resistance fighter" is neutral at all. If I were king--or editor of much of anything except this blog--I'd steer my Iraq crew toward the most precise language possible: Former regime loyalists, Fedayeen elements, Saddam loyalists, foreign fighters, Al Qaeda-linked operatives, etc.
If the motivations are unknown, I would steer toward the term "insurgents."
I do agree with the Herald, though, that the term "terrorism" should be reserved for those acts which deliberately target noncombatants.
Splash, Out
Jason
(Thanks to Ranting Profs for finding the article before I did. The site's run by a communications professor at Univ. North Carolina. I don't reference too many blogs because bloggers do too much of that, anyway. But if you like the pure-drop 'media junkie' pieces from this site, your very next stop should be Ranting Profs.)
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