Media
Schorr, Daniel
MEDIA Daniel Schorr WORDS FIT TO PRINT Author's Note: Last spring, I was invited by Ed Klein, editor of The New York Times Magazine, to write one of five columns on English usage that would...
...Like a manufacturer of three-piece suits, I have a vested interest...
...Terrorism was defined by the CIA in 1976 as "the threat or use of violence for political or symbolic effect on a target group wider than the original victim...
...Along with that goes the exploitation of the word "disinformation...
...Another leap broadened the definition to embrace propaganda intended to disarm the West about the Kremlin's aims...
...One more word has gone to war, no longer available for any comprehensible civilian use...
...In the West, the original meaning was expanded to cover efforts to conceal the full extent of the Soviet arms buildup ("military disinformation...
...At that point, "disinformation" had evolved into a handy all-purpose right-wing epithet to attack any support for policies of arms control and detente...
...Presidential Counselor Edwin Meese on a panel program: "We started literally from scratch...
...Budget Director David Stockman on NBC's Meet the Press: "The response that we have received already from Congress in terms of willingness to bite the apple...
...This is even more true of "terrorism," a word whose meaning wanes as its vogue waxes...
...Derived from the Russian "Dezinformatsiya," it was a term with special connotations for the Soviet KGB, applying to the use of forgery and other techniques to discredit targeted governments, persons, and policies...
...My eye was first caught by an advertisement, "A greetings card for every occasion...
...Under the Reagan budget, twenty-five million people would have their income cut...
...foreign policy-makers, he covers a wide range of guerrilla and resistance activities around the world...
...Vice President George Bush seemed to create an even more amorphous range of undesirable behavior when he stated in Austin, Texas, on March 30 that one of the Administration's major activities would be "an attack on crime and, indeed, on international terrorism...
...Several weeks after the article was submitted, it was returned to me by one of Klein's assistants, along with a note advising me that The Magazine "will not be able to run the piece...
...He died of an apparent heart attack" (which should be, "He apparently died of a heart attack...
...Would the "right-to-lifers," following verbal logic, oppose famine or capital punishment...
...Now, enshrined in the national budget, we have "a savings," as, "Projected reduction of 25 per cent for a savings of $4 billion...
...The electronic media, substituting hearing for reading, have given us a generation susceptible to "flaunt-flout" sound-alike confusions...
...I growl about misusages that have gained acceptance in print...
...Today, when Secretary of State Alexander Haig proclaims that "international terrorism will take the place of human rights" (another battered expression) as a chief concern of U.S...
...Belatedly, I have caught up with John Judis's report in the July issue of'The Progressive (" 'Disinformation' from The Times"), which dealt with the paper's "disturbing drift toward the Right...
...I do not know by what right the pro-abortionists on "life...
...Pet peeve is too mild to describe my reaction to the political conversion of words into weapons...
...When I recently pointed out to a television news writer that his script referred to Ambassador Philip Habib's efforts to "diffuse the Lebanon crisis" when he obviously meant "defuse," he said he did not understand the difference...
...Readers of The Progressive may be interested in the column on usage that The Times rejected for reasons it could not or would not explain...
...Eliminating "fraudabuseandwaste" was the way Reaganites hoped to reduce taxes while increasing military spending...
...A close reading of that 1977 report shows that "waste," a much different concept than fraud or abuse, involved judgments about such matters as unused beds in hospitals ($1.1 billion) and unnecessary surgery ($655 million), pointing to problems less colorful and more fundamental than "cheating...
...There was no explanation, nor have I been able to obtain one since...
...I do—to the menace of creeping pluralism...
...MEDIA Daniel Schorr WORDS FIT TO PRINT Author's Note: Last spring, I was invited by Ed Klein, editor of The New York Times Magazine, to write one of five columns on English usage that would appear while William Safire was on vacation...
...rowed from "savings bank" or "savings bond," but there is no saving grace in "a savings...
...Secretary Haig, in a confidential briefing published by The New York Times, said Soviet disavowals of involvement in El Salvador were part of "an intensive international disinformation campaign," and he declined to discuss abuses of power by the American-supported government in El'Salvador "so as not to feed the disinformation programs under way in the United States and Europe...
...But the phrase has been politically exploited in a way that is the enemy of meaning...
...In my youth, "greetings" came from Atlantic City or from the Draft Board, but on birthdays one sent a greeting card...
...Now the plague has spread to "Daylight Savings Time," and no one knows where this singular pluralism will strike next...
...Fraud, abuse, and waste" were hijacked during the Reagan Presidential campaign and melted down into one word, politically useful but semantically harmful...
...And I still wince about headline distortions of meaning, like The Washington Post's "Bess Truman Is Still Serious," and the late Washington Star's "Two Boys Remain Critical After Southeast Fire...
...The misuse of "literally," about which William Satire has written, is encouraged by a wish to be emphatic on television...
...More than forty years in every form of journalism have left me overstocked 1 in usage qualms lacking demand in today's chaotic semantic market...
...Their incomes may be cut, but I doubt that they would willingly have them cut...
...In fairness, it must be said that the assault on meaning started during the Carter Administration, when an Inspector General's report identified $6.3 billion to $7.4 billion in "fraud, abuse, and waste" in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare alone...
...Klein said I would have a free hand to express my dismay about the state of the language...
...Terrorism" bids fair to become the buzz-word of this decade as "subversive" was in the 1950s, doing similar violence to meaning, if to nothing else...
...Need I go on...
...The plural may have been borDaniel Schorr is senior correspondent for Cable Network News in Washington, D.C...
...Hawking my depreciated assets like tsarist bonds after the Russian revolution, I offer some pet peeves about current misuse and abuse of words...
...They demonstrated in protest of the decision...
...I still insist on "protest against...
...Figures of speech crack under stress...
Vol. 46 • January 1982 • No. 1
