The mass media routinely misuse or abuse language. Discuss with reference to your study of this option.
In Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman argue that, in order for a democracy to function properly, one of the media's fundamental tasks is to accurately and objectively report what is happening in the world, so as to allow voters to make informed choices. If this is indeed the case, the language used in news reports is of particular interest, as it is partly through the choice of words that events are represented to the audience. Thus the question can be asked: do the news media use language objectively to inform their viewers, or do they misuse and abuse it in order to persuade their viewers of a particular ideological agenda?
It would be naïve to suggest that no such abuse takes place. One channel that is no stranger to such accusations is Fox News Channel (FNC). In Robert Greenwald's 2004 documentary, Outfoxed, copious examples are given of what does indeed seem to be a routine misuse and abuse of language, of which two will be briefly discussed here. One involved the news presenter John du Pré, who describes how he was sent to Ronald Reagan's Presidential Library to report on the ex-President's 90th birthday celebrations. Du Pré explains how his superiors at FNC pressured him into completely misrepresenting what was, in fact, a normal, quiet day at the library, as a day where people had been “flocking” to pay their respects. The other memorable example involves the notorious Bill O'Reilly and his interview of Jeremy Glick, whose father had been killed in the 9/11 attacks but who had signed a petition opposing the war in Afghanistan. Glick attempted to explain his reasons on the show, mentioning, among other things, how Al Qaeda had been trained and funded by the US government. Yet, after the show had aired, O'Reilly claimed that Glick had accused both George Bushes of being directly involved in planning the 9/11 attacks. These examples, together with a myriad of others from the documentary, demonstrate obvious misuse and abuse of language, and suggest that, at least on FNC, such misuse and abuse is, in fact, routine.
But although there are ample cases of such deliberate distortions in the news media, it's debatable whether all questionable news reporting can usefully be called the routine misuse and abuse of language. In Flat Earth News, Nick Davies suggests that the financial realities of the modern mass-media corporations result in a problematic reliance amongst journalists on wire agencies and PR information. One startling example he gives is the story of an insurance firm selling a policy to a football fan to cover him against the possibility of his becoming traumatised by an England defeat in the 2006 World Cup. The same story, with the same football fan, had run 4 years earlier, and the same insurance firm was reported by the BBC to have sold a policy insuring two women against the possibility of giving birth to the second coming of Jesus Christ. Yet although these stories are hardly likely to be true, it's less clear whether this is an example of the mass media misusing and abusing language, as reporters are merely relating information that an enterprising PR firm has managed to pass off to the wire agencies.
Another strikingly good example of the pervasive power of PR organisations to manipulate the media into misusing and abusing language can be found in the UK press reports of the death of Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protest in London in April, 2009. Widespread reports of the police's heroic attempts to save the dying man from the angry mob, later discredited by video evidence obtained by the Guardian, documented a clear and systematic attempt by the Police Press Office to limit the repercussions of a potentially damaging journalistic investigation. However, although both of these examples do appear to be a misuse and abuse of language, it is debatable whether it is primarily the PR organisations or the mass media that are responsible for misleading the public. In short, it appears that although not all news stories are reliable, the modern journalist's reliance on wire agencies and PR for news stories makes it harder to directly apply the claim that the news media routinely misuse and abuse language.
While some media content clearly does misuse and abuse language, and still more could arguably be accused of doing so, there is plenty of media content that does not. This is effectively illustrated in Jhally and Ratzkoff's 2004 documentary Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land, which contrasts US mainstream media reporting of the Isreali-Palestine conflict with BBC reporting. While the documentary details how the US mainstream news media do indeed routinely misuse and abuse language – by referring to Israeli settlements as “neighbourhoods”, consistently describing Israeli violence as “retaliation”, and referring to Israeli and Palestinian deaths with vastly different language (e.g. calling the death of dozens of Israelis a “massacre”, while referring to a similar amount of Palestinian deaths as being “only a matter of a few dozen”) – the documentary also gives copious examples of BBC reporting that does not do so. Unlike the clips presented from the US news channels, the BBC clips use language to inform viewers of the suffering on both sides of the conflict, the history behind the conflict, and the complexities involved in it.
As such, to say that within the context of news reporting the mass media routinely misuse and abuse language would seem an unnecessarily over-simplified claim. For while such cases do, unequivocally, occur, even systematically in some sources, there are copious news reports in which language is employed with greater circumspection.