Friday, June 15, 2018

The Meaning of Words

Our traditional press is much better at reporting individual events than they are at conveying meaning. Meaning is conveyed in narratives that link events with one another and with facts. But in politics as soon as a narrative is constructed that favors one "side" over another "side", that narrative is deemed "opinion" which is left to battle with other "opinions" on a level playing field.

Except the playing field is not level. One side cares about true, meaningful narratives and the other does not. And that side has Fox News.

And that's the problem.

George Lakoff, the linguist, comes at the problem from that perspective in "Trump has turned words into weapons. And he's winning the linguistic war." With the subheading "From ‘spygate’ to ‘fake news’, Trump is using language to frame – and win – debates. And the press operate like his marketing agency"

Lakoff makes the important point that  "As president of the United States, anything he says – true or false – is faithfully parroted by the press. This needs to change." True, but the press did this even before Trump was president, when he was only a candidate, because the daily outrages made good copy for the daily news cycle. So the challenge is even greater.

And our press is very bad at recognizing what Lakoff calls "framing" as well as related techniques used by propagandists. As Lakoff implores, "Reporting, and therefore repeating, Trump’s tweets just gives him more power. There is an alternative. Report the true frames that he is trying to pre-empt. Report the truth that he is trying to divert attention from. Put the blame where it belongs. Bust the trial balloon. Report what the strategies are trying to hide."

As Lakoff continues, "...don’t spread lies. Don’t privilege Trump’s lies by putting their specific language in the headlines, the leads or the hashtags. Don’t repeat the lies assuming people will automatically know they’re lies. People need to know the president is lying, but be careful about repeating the lies because “a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth”. Repetition of lies spreads them."

Lakoff is right about all this. But, in order to do a better job, editors will need to recognize false balance and the false equivalencies that result from forcing "balance" reporting in a world of imbalance.


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