Blog It Like It Is

This LGF entry describes how Canadian media organisation CanWest is replacing every instance of 'militants', 'activists', 'gunmen' etc. in Reuters dispatches by the more accurate and honest 'terrorists'.

Reuters is not happy about this, but, as some blogger would say, screw them.

In order to support CanWest, I whipped up a quick Movable Type plugin, the CanWest filter. Just unzip and drop it into your MT plugins folder, and when publishing an MT entry select the 'CanWest' filter as text formatting.

It will change all instances of the words militant, activist, fighter, gunman and resistance into the T-word...

Suggestions for more transformations welcome in the comments...

Comments

[Neo]

My personal favorite is limp-wristed editors changing "illegal alien" into "undocumented immigrant" or "undocumented alien" as if that somehow wipes away their "illegal" status (FYI News Editors: No, it doesn't).

I actually saw a letter to the editor of some ultra-liberal art/ent rag where the phrase "illegal alien" was being used as a citation of the *old term* by someone else equally miffed about this PC change, and the editor of the letters section did in fact replace that reference of the "old" phrase with "undocumented immigrant" too! You can't win with these people.

You could also do one for "indian" and change it to "native american."

This all reminds me of an old MadTV skit where they showed an old B&W movie showing stereotypical indian conflict with the white man themes, and all the instances of "indian" were overdubbed with "NATIVE AMERICAN" in this horribly flat mono-tone voice to redo the movie in PC-speak. Man, I laughed like crazy over that!

[petetheelder]

Uh, what happens when the story is talking about militants, activists, gunmen, etc. who really are not terrorists? As in "unknown Iraqi gunmen shot and killed militants who were attacking a group of children today".

[Ric Locke]

Petetheelder, such people are the actual losers when a policy like this is implemented.

Marten(?), your solution is brilliant but redundant. The same process is going on in the minds of people who read the news. People who, e.g., shoot children in the back are "terrorists," whether Reuters wants to call them "insurgents," "freedom fighters," or "strawberries" for that matter, so whatever word is used to describe them ultimately means "terrorist." All Reuters and BBC are doing is collapsing all the related words into "terrorist," to the ultimate detriment of genuine insurgents and the like.

See Words by Nelson Ascher for a more elegant exposition of the same point.

Regards,
Ric Locke
ps if the link doesn't come through, it's europundits.com for Sept. 19th of this year.

[Jocund Mavis]

.... here are some more weasel words....

Spiritual Leader = Terrorist Boss
The holy city of = the city of
peace activist = terrorist enabler
martyr = dead terrorist

[The Lonewacko Blog]

My personal favorite is limp-wristed editors changing "illegal alien" into "undocumented immigrant" or "undocumented alien" as if that somehow wipes away their "illegal" status (FYI News Editors: No, it doesn't).

This filter might need some AI to deal with, for instance, the NYT. They've euphemized illegal aliens as "newcomers" and as those "who cannot prove that they are here legally."

[Robert Read]

Give these a try!

Mugged, Robbed etc = "Utilised Decentralised Socialism"
Pacifist = "Defense Parasite"
"Social Justice" = "Failure Reward"
"Income Tax" = "Success Fines"
Disarmament = "Attack Invitation"
Disarm= "Invite Attack"
"Pro-Life" = "Forced Birth"
"Investment in Public Services" = "Wreckless Wasteful Spending"
"spending on Schools and Hospitals" = "Tax"
"Union rights" = "Unemployment"
"fair share" = "more than I do"

[Richard]

Great work! When they write the history of the euphemism translation script Live From Brussels must get credit.

If they don't already have an award for this sort of thing, I suggest they should, and it should be called the Orwell.

[Carridine]

Living in the Far East most of my adult life, it took me a while, but I realized that people were using the term 'gay' as a euphemism for 'homosexual'.

If the term homosexual is not evoking ugliness or disgust, there's no need for a euphemism, no need for a pretty, happy cover-word.

Add 'gay' to the list of words to be stripped out, and replace it with 'homosexual'.

[Eye Opener]

May I suggest changing 'executed Iranian activist' to 'murdered Bahai'? Iran kills a lot of these peaceful people, because their very existence implies that Jesus told the truth about the Holy One coming in what we now call 1844 (1260AH)!

'imprisoned political activist' is the same thing, when referring to Iranians. 'Iranian prostitute' usually means 'Baha'i wife', because the government doesn't recognize Baha'i marriages, THEREFORE if she's living with you, she's a prostitute AND you are a pimp. Go to jail. Don't pass GO.

You do realize that this replaces "conservative activist" with "conservative terrorist", right?

[evariste]

As I mentioned in my pinging post above, you're converting "gunmen" to "terrorist"-might want to fix that :-)

[rightwatch]

"You do realize that this replaces "conservative activist" with "conservative terrorist", right?"

LOL!! And "resistance to antibiotics" would be "terrorism to antibiotics."

Seriously, thank you for the plugin. Another small victory for the "guys in pajamas."

:-)

[Silkscreen]

You do realize that this replaces "conservative activist" with "conservative terrorist", right?
http://www.silkscreen.krify.com

[rome sanzio]

great blog. clearly to some people the line between activism and terrorism is blurred

check out http://www.germany.com