Posted on 06/07/2007 10:40:57 PM PDT by monomaniac
A tipster reports that the New York Daily News has a style guide on its internal computer system with a very typical liberal-media template for its reporters on how to handle abortion labeling:
Guidelines regarding stories and headlines on abortion:
1. Call those who oppose abortions abortion foes or abortion opponents or (in tight-count heads) abort foes. Avoid the phrases pro-life or pro-lifers, except in direct quotations.
2. Those who favor a woman's right to an abortion are abortion rights activists or pro-abortion rights or pro-choice. Avoid pro-abortion.
3. Also avoid the phrase "when the life of the mother is at stake." Make it "... life of the woman ..." Don't call the fetus an unborn child, and don't refer to the unborn in headlines.
4. You can use abortion clinic or abort clinic in tight-count headlines.
5. Columnists have free rein in choosing their own terms to describe the issue.
I call that evil.
Just my opinion of course.
I did not know Rudy had the time to be a memo writing consultant to the Daily News.
* snort *
That’s fairly standard. The AP stylebook — which isn’t hidden on an internal computer network, but can be found on bookstore shelves — has much the same guidance, but I don’t think it has the “life of the mother” prohibition.
“3. Also avoid the phrase “when the life of the mother is at stake.” Make it “... life of the woman ...” Don’t call the fetus an unborn child, and don’t refer to the unborn in headlines.”
Simply disgusting. Don’t call her a mother, because common sense would then tell us it means she’s carrying a child.
Don’t call “the fetus” an unborn child, because common sense would then tell us that child is a human being.
That they would purposefully make these distinctions, with full knowlege that they’re doing it, is sickening. They have to stop their own reporters from making the the “mistake” of accidentally refering to the fetus as a human being!
Augh! So frustrating. I shoulda stayed in the Paris Hilton thread!
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