Chucking old labels as we embrace change

It seems we’re redefining everything around us to conform to this new era of hope/desperation. So while we’re at it how about we update the terms we use to describe some social phenomena that are no longer phenomenal.

Labels are handy, but they can become a substitute for actually saying something meaningful. If I just slap a label on somebody, that tells you all you need to know about their point of view, right? Unfortunately, media reports that are supposed to provide insight into issues often fall back to handy labels either to save space or thought. Go ahead and deconstruct a political rant or news article. Throw out the labels and, if you’re lucky, you may be left with a nugget of substance every 10 paragraphs.

But if we're going to have labels, let's keep them up to date like we do our antivirus software (a pretty apt analogy). Here are a few everyday labels to replace, with suggested updates as available. Got ideas for others? Let me know..

Business Leaders: Do you know any anymore? A leader is someone you look up to as an inspiration or an example, someone who motivates you to do your best. Someone you willingly follow. In the best situations leaders are selected by those they lead.

Who picked the CEO of Bank of America or General Motors as a business leader? Or Donald Trump? Would that term traditionally apply to them? You bet. They lead in that they best milk the system, whether it’s in bankruptcy court, government bailouts or rising to their office by failing to protest the blunders or shortsightedness in their industries. A career based on avoiding headaches is hardly a showing of leadership. Rich guys? OK. Business “interests,” maybe. Leaders? Hardly.

Consumer: While technically a correct term for an important cog in the economic machine, the Naderite version of the term has corrupted its true meaning. Nader’s vision of an aware or wary user of goods and services, one who doesn’t deserve exploding gas tanks and toxic chew toys, ignores our role as as a guilty party in the degradation of the planet. Let's face it, to be an active consumer is to be an active producer of solid waste – garbage. And, thankfully, most Americans know this today. So this is an apt term for someone taking a bite out of the world’s resources. The term for someone who buys something is actually something of a throwback: customer. Let’s start using it again, alright? As in: “The customer is always right.”

Environmentalist (see also, “tree hugger”): These are now terms of exclusion as used by many who utter them. Any “ism” is exclusionary on a subconscious level. The suggestion is of something fringy, like someone who hugs trees. I don’t hug trees, do you? Yet I want my kids to live a fulfilling life well past my age in a hospitable environment. And their kids, too. So when the Zogby poll finds 89 percent of Americans agree we need to cut our dependence on non-renewable energy sources (in 2006), or when 73 percent of self-described moderates agree with Obama's call for legislation to address climate change now, who deserves to be labeled as “the other?”

But there are ism-ists out there. People who think that there is no man-made global warming, for example, because the press feels obligated to find one of them to “balance” its coverage of reality. I suggest the deniers become the labeled, rather than the rest of us. “Denialists,” in fact, would work for the global warming issue. For those trying to rationalize their own or their business’ pollution, I would again turn to the dictionary for the literal label: polluter. As in, “Polluters countered that the legislation would harm their business.” When’s the last time you saw that in a news story?

Labeling is even more insidious than spin. It presumes a common understanding and implies what that understanding is supposed to be.

As reliable information sources grow fewer and less reliable, keep your antennae up for labels and what or who is behind them. Trust more what is described than on how it is labeled, and if that description or demonstration is lacking, move on. It’s a painstaking process.

The 'R' Word: How about 'Reality?'

A yardstick of just how timid our press has become is the very existence of "The R Word" as a synonym for recession, the state of our economy that most people know we have been in for some time. By uttering "the R word" and giving a wink, the media are essentially saying: "Isn't it cute how we don't say 'recession?'"

Well no, it's not. Because it reflects the way they have been goaded into abandoning their role as truth-tellers, their duty to call 'em as anyone can see 'em.

More recently the Bush administration's media handlers made it clear they didn't want the word "bailout" applied to the bailout of underachieving capitalists by the working public. They wanted the word "relief" applied, and some journalists gave it serious consideration. The Associated Press responded, to its credit, by putting out a small sidebar defining the two terms and making it clear to anyone who can read that it is a bailout, just as it was for Chrysler in the 1970s. Much of the press has since called a bailout a bailout on a consistent basis. But Wikipedia provides a pretty clear summary of why news organizations can't screw on the courage to do their job with "recession."

A recession is a contraction phase of the business cycle, or "a period of reduced economic activity." The U.S. based National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) defines a recession more broadly as "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP growth, real personal income, employment (non-farm payrolls), industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales." A sustained recession may become a depression.

Some business & investment glossaries add to the general definition a rule of thumb that recessions are often indicated by two consecutive quarters of negative growth (or contraction) of gross domestic product (GDP). Newspapers often quote this rule of thumb, however the measure fails to register several official (NBER defined) US recessions.

So what the media have done instead is to use forms of the word recession when others do in directly quoting them, or use variations like "approaching a recession" or "recessionary." The absurdity of this is has become so obvious it has to be wiped out of our eyes, as the stock market, unemployment and other indicators plunge in ways not seen in 14 years, then 26 years, etc. Because during those spans there have been what everyone knew and history recorded as recessions: the Reagan recession, the recession that toppled Bush I, etc. — and as the news reports state, the indicators are worse now than during those times. Yet the media cling to the standard handed down from the White House and a desperate Wall Street — the one, as cited above, that "fails to register several official (NBER defined) US recessions."

Why is this? Do the media feel a patriotic duty to bolster public confidence, as in time of war when they have historically snuffed information at the request of our government? In this case cooperation was politically tainted when there was a campaign for the presidency recently, because it understated the reality of the past two years. Yet it was so effective that even the opposing presidential candidates dutifully avoided saying "recession."

The press has no such cheerleading duties for the economy, yet today's journalism seems to take it on. It's part of a general head-nodding approach to accepting handouts rather than reporting reality, and it's dangerous. It seems to have become a reflex to run with what they're given as corporate ownership increases job reductions in the media, and the reliance on "official" sources increases.

As everyday people look around themselves and recognize things for what they are, they are less inclined to trust the "trusted sources of information," leading to continuing declines in news consumption, as opposed to commentary, a corresponding need for still more staff reductions, and a willingness to do even less valuable work. In other words, the cancer feeds off itself.

Journalists and Hobbyists

As the mainstream press collapses as an information source into a repository for press releases, promo and quick-hit, skin-deep reporting, it's often said that the Internet is supplanting the printed page and even television as the source of information for engaged citizens.

My questions are two:

• What kind of information?
• Citizens engaged in what?

If you are reading this, I'll assume you take it as a given that corporations have swallowed the vast majority of significant old-media outlets and, where that hasn't happened, many owners are quite satisfied to pander to and promote local interest groups of the business persuasion because their advertising depends on it. You may realize, for example, that:

• "American Idol" results and previews during Fox-affiliate newscasts fall not under commercial time (which has increased continuously during newscasts over the years) but during what's left of "news" minutes. "Idol" just happens to air on Fox.
• Words like "Advertorial" and "Communitainment" are spoken with straight faces in media business circles.
• Staff cutbacks have decimated reporting staffs. It leaves head-nodding TV interviewers and even the best-intentioned newspaper reporters thinking as much about their next assignment that day as they do about maybe asking a follow-up question.

This could be a glorious era for propaganda if there were not a new-media substitute for the kind of arm's-length, dispassionate truth-seeking that has guided Americans toward informed decision-making in years past.

Wait a minute: (Gulp!) There is no such substitute in sight.

The blogosphere, you say? Online magazines? YouTube? You jest!

When Thomas Paine published "Common Sense" during the run-up to the American Revolution, he was a blogger of sorts, making his living elsewhere. Political conversation such as his, informed by a deep understanding of certain Colonial sentiments, was nonetheless opinion. And it wasn't necessarily an opinion shared by the majority.

Then as now, people spent the bulk of their brain power on survival. Today we have the added burden of consumerism. We're no longer finding the time to participate in decision-making because we're finding plenty of time after work to fulfill our role as consumers. The media, fueled by sponsors, fuel that instinct.

Fox's "We report, you decide," is a wonderful slogan, but it's not really what happens. It's what is — and more important, what is not — reported that's the issue. Count how many newspaper or broadcast stories cast their audience members as active decision-makers vs. those casting people as passive consumers. And that's political bias aside.

It's what Bill Moyers refers to as "the illusion of popular consent." The decisions are all made for you. After all, as you hear so often in this democracy: "What can you do about it?"

People who sense this find it easier to run with what they hear, and that's why blog consumers may increase in numbers, but not necessarily in knowledge. They are not usually spanning the spectrum even to gather opinion, but flock to what they already think, like talk-radio listeners do.

The fact that reporters and editors paid by the corporate press find time to blog further contributes to the loss of actual, get-your-hands-dirty information-gathering. They quote themselves and each other on a regular basis but seldom do blogs originate the research, do the math, add new source material to think about.

Repurposing is no substitute for journalism. If the mainstream press, with corporate funding, isn't eager to pay real journalists to do real journalism, then who is? Will you pay directly for an online subscription to a reliable news source? It hasn't worked that way for news outlets who have tried charging readers for access so far.

And the bloggers? Much was made when some brought down Dan Rather or an occasional whistleblower created a stir in the blogosphere, but their traction results only when the corporate media begin echoing the rants to a wider audience. In fact, the corporate media remain frequent links and sources for information in the blogosphere, and as we said at the outset, quality and selection there are withering.

The hobbyists among the bloggers are either burning out or reaching virtually no one. They have day jobs. They suffer, on a small scale, from the same issue that befuddles the media giants: How do you "monetize" new-media journalism? And how many among them ever had the intent, much less the ability, to ferret out information for information's sake?

Studies indicate that college students, perhaps our best and brightest hope for the future, are way more interested in Facebook than in the news.

The very nature of news websites, when they are viewed, is to cherry-pick interest areas without happening upon an article that's unintended but valuable. Narrow focus reinforces narrow minds.

In the current journalism/consumer environment, even those slits are closing to the light of day.

Bob Datz is a marketing communications consultant and remains a journalist at heart and in fact. Learn more at www.datzmedia.com

Pastor Wright Coverage: Another Opportunity to Miss the Point

One of the things journalists are supposed to be able to do is back up what they say or write. But the very setup of a story is also something that isn't necessarily a given.

This was clear in reporting on an issue that for most outlets is in the recent past: the incendiary words of Pastor Jeremiah Wright and his infamous 9-11 sermon. Thirty-five minutes long, it was disseminated in snippets over the Internet that amounted to less than two minutes of select rhetoric.

And in framing this story outlets from NPR to the New York Post calmly referred to the pastor's words as "hate speech."


Hate speech is pretty strong stuff, and the term has a meaning in modern usage. The American Heritage Dictionary 2000 edition defines it as bigoted speech attacking or disparaging a social or ethnic group or a member of such a group. That pretty well sums it up, and usually we don't have a lot of discussion about what constitutes it: We know it when we hear it.

Much hate speech comes in the form racial, ethnic, religious or anti-gay diatribes. These are sometimes laughed off as "politically incorrect" by individuals who are in need of serious self-examination. Most of us know that radio's Don Imus' comments on "nappy-headed ho's" fit the bill. We don't have to stop and think about whether the Nazis, KKK or radical religious elements fall into a gray area with much of what they say. The words speak for themselves.

No group has a lock on hate speech, and no group can escape being victimized. Of the 888 hate groups identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2007, for example, 88 were categorized as black nationalist. New Black Panther Party leader Khalid Muhammad, for example, uses clear hate phrases to in some way try and lift the self-esteem of black audiences — in much the same way white racists do on their side. His words won't soil this essay but are easily searchable online.


Pastor Jeremiah Wright's words that are being picked up opportunistically and edited down to cast a shadow over Barak Obama's presidential campaign don't even come close to hate speech. Hate speech is directed at individuals and groups that did nothing but be born into this world the way they are.

Because words are spoken in anger, that doesn't qualify them as hate speech. Someone who loses a family member for lack of health insurance probably wouldn't speak about politely about interests that work the power structure to make sure that situation persists. Normal people don't take kindly to those they see as responsible for needless, immoral death.

In the same way, a member of a racial group that has undeniably been shafted since being brought to this continent in chains may have an intemperate thing or two to say, a policy disagreement or two with the political establishment.

Although he was addressing a black congregation, Wright was talking about a policy disagreement when he said "God damn America" rather than "God bless America." He didn't say "white America." And what he was damning, if anyone chooses to listen to his entire speech, was a Mideast policy that for decades has supported the expropriation of Palestine and cozies up to oil-soaked authoritarian regimes. That's not hate speech; that's free speech.


It's the kind of policy debate we haven't heard while Fox has kept up the drumbeat about Rev. Wright as the most meaningful issue in a Barak Obama presidential campaign.

Bob Datz is a marketing communications consultant and remains a journalist at heart and in fact. Learn more at www.datzmedia.com.