'What many are referring to'

It's certainly been fun the past few days, watching the Fair 'n' Balanced Network tie itself into knots trying to keep up with the official line on the newest "Russia hoax." And Monday morning's No. 2 story is a fine illustration of how the routines of news work to make the Fox perspective look perfectly normal.

There's a tweet from a top newsmaker to cycle the story ahead, so the central assertion never has to rise to the top (as on Sunday, with "Top conservatives demand answers" and "Trump pushes back"). We have denials from the Russians and the Taliban before we get to domestic statements: first an expert, then the rival candidate (though he gets a separate column reflecting the Trump campaign's main election narrative), then the official White House comment, to put all the back-and-forth into context.

The most charming sign of Fox's attention to detail, though, is the hedge in the paragraph addressing the scope of the situation:

The Times’ report sent a shockwave through the Capitol on Friday where politicians have been focused on the recent unrest after George Floyd’s death in police custody and what many are referring to a resurgent coronavirus outbreak.

(Here's a screen capture in case it goes away:)

And just like that, the magic of attribution -- which we all love, right? -- turns a piece of data into just another assertion.



 

It's the best there is

Every editor, no matter how open-minded, has a peeve or two that never escapes

unranted-about. This is one of mine, and since it's now showed up in my local paper twice this week (today, above, and Tuesday, at right), you get to share it too.

Granted, Catch-22 is some catch -- by some accounts, the best there is. But it is not the problem facing the restaurants and bars (not "eateries," or you're getting into multiple peeve territory). Here's a summary from today's piece, which, aside from the kicker in the print edition, doesn't even mention Catch-22:

Now as they slowly reopen, they're faced with the new reality of keeping their customers and employees safe, while trying to be profitable.

Those are some serious issues, compounded by more challenges for the employees: who do you call out for breaking the rules and when, and with what expectation of support? If an officer walks in and says "gimme eat," do you give him eat or tell him to put on a goddamn mask and ask politely? But "Catch-22" is not a fancy word for a problem with no easy or pleasant answers; it's a problem that eats its own tail. Let's say the state Health Department has issued an order saying that employees who have an irrational fear of catching the coronavirus don't have to work. All they have to do is ask for paid time off. But if they ask for paid time off, they must have a rational fear of the coronavirus, so they're not eligible. That's a catch-22.

The source quoted in Tuesday's story gets it literally right: "It's a no-win for everyone." Call it that, or a lose-lose. It stands out better when it isn't dressed up as something it's not.

'Acceptable in all references'

The AP's style announcement today (actually several, so go view the whole thread) is a big deal --not just because of the AP's outsize influence on US news language, but because that influence has reflected the AP's historically conservative approach pretty much forever. Here are a few highlights of how the world has looked through the AP's eyes over the years:

1970: The courtesy title "Mr." is to be used "only with Mrs., or with clerical titles."
1977: "Use black or Negro, as appropriate in the context, for both men and women. Do not use Negress."
1980: "Black" is "acceptable in all references for Negro."
1986: "Native American" should not be used for American Indians because their ancestors "migrated to the continent over a land bridge from Asia."('86 was a momentous year at the Stylebook; women could appear in news stories without courtesy titles; "Dark Continent" was no longer a synonym for "Africa," and "paddy wagon" vanished altogether.)
1994: "Gay" is "acceptable as popular synonym for both male and female homosexuals."
2002: "Sharia" becomes "strict Islamic law" (and picks up a distinction that doesn't exist IRL: the tied-T is marked on adjectives but not nouns). It goes back to being "Islamic law" in 2003.

By "conservative approach" I don't mean "molasses that voted for Goldwater," and I certainly don't mean to slight the excellent work the AP is doing these days applying a just-the-facts approach to the rantings of the White House and its armed propaganda wing. The AP has always had a broad range of contributors and a broad range of users.* The earliest edition of the Stylebook I have is from 1960 (the year AP and UPI started collaborating on a common stylebook), and it notes that the AP had been working for years on ways to provide copy "more nearly conforming with majority usage and thereby make use of TTS tape efficient to the maximum degree": if you don't have to re-keystroke the copy, you cut a step out of the production process. On the user end, the same text is going to the big-city dailies as to the mom-and-pop daily in Kansas. Well beyond the era of hot type, if the New York Herald-Gazoo didn't want courtesy titles for women and the Emporia Democrat-Republican did, it was easier for the H-G to take them out than for the D-R to put them in.**

Style is also one of the main markers of objectivity: when you're citing a "precise" or "specific" usage, as in those non-Native Americans whose ancestors are really Asian, you're deferring to an outside authority rather than imposing your fallible judgment. It's unusual for stylebooks to go as far as the Guardian's "Our use of language should reflect not only changes in society but the newspaper's values"; the default is to decide that you're reflecting the world as it is.

My perspective, should you want it: Good for the AP. I think this was overdue, though I'd also point out that owning an AP Stylebook doesn't mean you have to follow it into the ground. If you've been holding off on a sensible decision on organizational style because the Journalist's Bible tells you so, stop it. You won't hurt the AP's feelings.

Now let's all sit back and wait to see what happens when Fox News hears about this -- given that the AP's 2013 decision to stop using "illegal immigrant" (which the Stylebook had mandated over "undocumented worker" in a 2008 entry) was worth a lead story at the Fox homepage.

* With a lot of overlap; the AP is a co-op, after all. Raise your hand if you've ever chatted with the nearest buro at the end of a shift about which stories it wanted to pick up.
** The NYT had nearly 100 Linotypes around the time the first reference-size edition of the  AP Stylebook came out in 1977. You make the call!