S. Vertigo wrote:
--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote:
Calling this squad terrorists,
calling their act murder, presuming that the squad
was from Al-Aqsa... all seem
to be strategies to inflame the issue with
unverified facts.
...Hence 'disruption,' which appears aimed toward
sabotaging progress. I dont think thats entirely the
case here; the term 'terrorist' is inapropriate as a
primary descriptor; but much of American political
rhetoric uses it. If I replace the term terrorist with
militant, am I farting in the wind, or will I receive
some support? This is a general editorial-type
decision with regard to what terms are NPOV.
To my knowlege, an 'editorial decision process' about
anything (other than the general concept of NPOV) let
alone what terms to avoid has yet to be tried here. It
should be; we should have an editorial board that sets
some journalistic NPOV standards. Heck, even the
Reuters article that Lance6 was quoting was just
mostly an up to the minute hack job.
S
Setting up some kind of weaponry seems "militant" (or
"military") enough
for me. In a Quebec French context it has come to be applied to any
active supporter of a political party. I tend to object when that use
is transferred into English. In the context of the current dispute it's
at least worth trying. "Militant" can probably be more easily
circumscribed than "terrorist". Zero's term was "gunmen", and
that too
is relatively neutral. The concept of a good militant is as easily
envisioned as that of a bad militant, and perhaps that is what makes it
more acceptable. On the other hand the idea of a good terrorist would
be a pretty hard sell.
The level of support a person gets on anything here is unpredictable.
Speaking for myself, I would not have commented but for the fact that
the matter appeared in the mailing list. I just don't hang out at the
Israel/Palestine articles. Most of us don't.
I like the idea of a list of tabooed words. People tend not to
understand words very well, and it gets worse when a controversial
subject is involved. Understanding that a word has connotations in
addition to its denotaions can be hard to get across. This episode led
me to dig up my copy of Stuart Chase's "The Tyranny of Words",
originally published in 1938. He relates the story of asking about 200
people what they thought the word "fascism" meant, and how dramatically
different the answers were, though most had negative connotations. It
includes "Government in the interest of the majority for the purpose of
accomplishingthings democracy cannot do" or "A govenmentwhere you can
live comfortably if you never disagree with it" or "A form of government
where socialism is used to perpetuate capitalism".
Ec