No Such Thing As Palestinian Terrorists--Or Wikipedia Whistleblowers

Kathryn Jean Lopez passes along the following from Yahoo!, reporting the latest in the media's effort towards clarity by refusing to take a stand on Wikileaks:

The Associated Press, for one, used "whistleblower" as late as last Thursday in describing WikiLeaks but has since opted against it.


"We've had 'whistleblower' in some copy but have decided not to use it any longer," AP spokesman Paul Colford told The Cutline. "Our description now reflects the site's own name: a website that specializes in displaying leaked information."

Colford didn't say whether or not the AP considers "whistleblower" to be inaccurate, but simply said that "we think we have a better, clearer description, and that's what we're using."

Meanwhile NBC News spokeswoman Lauren Kapp also told The Cutline that the network was retiring "whistleblower" in its WikiLeaks reports, even though it called WikiLeaks a "whistleblower" on last Monday's "Nightly News with Brian Williams." Reuters, which used "whistleblower" following the State Dept. leak, no longer uses it, either. "Our style guidelines ask that reporters not describe WikiLeaks as a whistleblower," Reuters spokeswoman Erin Kurtz said.

Not surprisingly, the media does rely on the old standby, referring to Wikileaks activists (1,560 hits) and there are even some references to Wikileaks militants (63 hits)--but the media will apparently refrain from making any kind of judgement call on the group, even though there are about 19,300 hits for Wikileaks terrorists.

You can expect that last term to fall into disfavor in lieu of the more enlightened phrases, just as in the old days there were some unenlightened souls who referred to Palestinian freedom fighters by the same archaic term.

And yes, there are 5 hits for Wikileaks freedom fighters.

Technorati Tag: Wikileaks.