Language as weapon and shield
2 years, 7 months agoYou may have heard that a bi-polar airline passenger has recently been shot by undercover air marshals. The BBC reports “Man shot dead at Florida airport”. There are certainly issues of balance with regards to offensive force to pre-empt terrorist action, as well as the question of whether terrorists would hit the airlines again now that it is no longer the “weak link”. I’m agitated by the lack of intelligent debate on these issues, but that’s not what has made me blog today. (Okay the entry title is a giveaway)
The US air marshal statement released is the most extreme case of biased textual representation I have seen in a long time:
“As he was attempting to evade them, his actions caused the FAMs to fire shots, and in fact he is deceased.”
Journalists regularly place sentences in the passive to elliminate blame, but this is going much further. IMHO, this is absolutely disgusting and moreso because most people won’t even notice - the power of rhetoric such as “collateral damage”, and the language used here is that it is insidious. While they could have completely removed the FAMs (air marshals) from the sentance to make it “Shots were fired”, they present the firing of shots as something totally undirected and not implicitly violent. Shots were not fired “at the man”, and post-text of “in fact he is deseased.” does not offer the slightest causal connection between these shots being fired and the man dying.
December 9th, 2005 at 5:45 pm
In such times when people, no matter of what background, what politcal leaning, or class, need to pay more attention to all that happens around them, the source of their information, and the method in which it is written, in these times, people are ever more ready and willing to give up their freedoms for independant examination and speech for what is labelled security. This reminds me greatly of the social philosophy you talked about - Burton? “People who give up their right for freedom of speech in the namesake of security deserve neither” (?) i don’t think my quotation is quite right.
It is a valid point that you are making here. It is disturbing to note that the media - especially print media - is one of the few resources large enough to communicate to the unconverted. Yet here, in this example, for reasons that lie behind the veil, the writers/editors have opted yet again to use the passivity of language not to report events but to hide and lie subtefuge to the cause and effects of the event they are reporting. Where are the checks and balances in this so called free-world?