Complete Story
08/17/2016
This election year, journalists must be watchdogs — and word dogs
Does anyone else feel as if the coverage of this presidential election is less about events, issues, ads and poll numbers than it is about language? Hillary Clinton and countless others have reminded Donald Trump that "Words matter."
(By the way, Hillary, they should matter to you, too.)
Like all short sentences, "Words matter" has that ring of gospel truth. It follows a language trend in which more and more things are declared to "matter": Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter, All Lives Matter….
A recent editorial in the Tampa Bay Times, titled "Trump’s talk irresponsible, dangerous," contained these sentences: "Words matter.…Facts matter.…Context matters.…Records matter….Elections matter…."
If this is a words election, then journalists must expand their roles from watchdogs to word dogs. That’s what I am. At key moments, like my Jack Russell terrier Rex, word dogs stop, sniff the air, then prick our ears, testing political language in every way we can. More and more journalists are fact-checking the words of candidates, and that is a powerful tool. But other language tools can be brought to bear, perspectives such as grammar, semantics, narrative, slang and rhetoric.
