When a word fuels the fear

[Times art: David Williams]

By DAVE SCHEIBER

© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 15, 2001

When the media use the word "terror'' in place of "terrorist,'' they do more than report the facts; they play into our fears, linguists say.

As America's war on terrorism unfolds, the power of words continues to play a part in the battle.

Already, the language we use to describe life since the morning of Sept. 11 has made headlines.

President Bush's off-the-cuff use of the word "crusade" was promptly followed by an effort to avoid the term, which connotes to many Muslims the religious war once waged against them by Christians.

Reuters news service has avoided describing the suicide hijackers as "terrorists," citing a long-standing policy "against the use of emotive terms."

And increasingly, as the conflict evolves, new nuances of language can be seen in headlines.

Watch the streaming news roundups on CNN and you'll see frequent references to the "Terror Attacks" in New York and Washington. Not terrorist attacks. Terror attacks. Fox News has dubbed its report "War On Terror." A CNBC update detailed the FBI's Most Wanted List in the "terror attack." All over the nation, the shortened description of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon is showing up frequently in TV and print coverage.

"Terror" may be a convenient abbreviation. It has been used before, for instance, in describing violent incidents in Israel in the 1980s, or coverage of the Gulf War in 1990. But do such phrases as "Terror Attack," "Terror Victims" and "Terror Probe" color the meaning of what took place last month?

George Lakoff, professor of linguistics at the University of California-Berkeley, says the terms may sound similar, but there's a big difference in meaning.

According to Lakoff, by using the phrase "terror attack," emphasis is placed on the terror produced.

"If you use "terrorist,' you are looking at the person who carried out the act on the population," says Lakoff, author of Moral Politics and Metaphor and War, a widely distributed Internet critique of the Gulf War.

"But if you use "terror,' you create an emotion that the person in the audience is supposed to feel. And that is not a good thing."

"I would never say "terror attack' in these cases. By saying terror attack, you're helping the terrorists, because their job is to increase terror."

A check of daily newspaper and wire service references to the attack between Sept. 11 and last week shows that "terrorist" is still used far more often than "terror." On CNN, the descriptions have alternated in the cable network's coverage.

"We've used the word terrorist since the very first day," says CNN's Matt Furman, vice president of public relations in the United States. "It's absolutely interchangeable. I suspect that terror was picked over terrorist (in some cases) because perhaps it sounds sharper, or looks sharper or is easier to fit on the screen."

Reuters, meanwhile, has taken a far different approach. The international news agency created a controversy last month when an internal memo to staff, stressing the need to remain impartial, came to light. Reuters executives made the statement that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." (Some might question how flying 767s on suicide missions into office buildings could constitute fighting for freedom.)

The agency recently issued an apology for its choice of words but reiterated its policy. "It doesn't just deal with the word "terrorist,' it's a policy about not using emotive or emotional words," says Nancy Bobrowitz, Reuters' senior vice president for corporate communications. "Of course, if we're quoting somebody who calls it a terrorist attack or a terror attack or whatever, we quote people accurately."

Otherwise, Reuters' stories refer, for example, to "the attacks."

In the end, the message is getting across clearly, however the media phrase it, according to Carl Gottlieb, deputy director for Project for Excellence in Journalism, based in Washington, D.C.

Says Gottlieb: "Terrorism is terrorism."

-- St. Petersburg Times researcher Kitty Bennett contributed to this report.

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