“Illegal” or “Undocumented”? A Media Dilema
Journalists love to navel-gaze. We love to hold forums about our coverage and then have discussions about the forums about our coverage. “Did we do it right?” And, when we talked about doing it right, “what could we have done better?” You’d think we’d be impeccable by now.
But there always seems to be another question to ask, another forum to organize. As recently as four years ago the AP Stylebook – etched in stone, down from the mountain last word on all journalistic style things – pronounced that the term “illegal immigrant” was the proper and agreed upon term with which to refer to persons living in the United States sans proper legal documentation. “Illegal Alien” was deemed improper because it carried a too negative connotation. “Undocumented Alien” was thought to be imprecise. I’ve never used either of those terms.
In all my writing and in my tenure as a news director I forbade the use of both of those terms – Stylebook be damned. I prefer the term “undocumented worker;” it seems more honest. It’s also a compromise. I once made reference to “undocumented taxpayers” and then sat amused at the stack of letters and email that one term generated. It’s not an easy thing to consider.
Of course, journalists being journalists, someone took a pencil and counted the references to different undocumented alien descriptors over the course of several years. The American Journalism Review published the results of a study done by Karen Carmichael and Rabiah Alicia Burks, both graduate students at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. Here’s a sample of their findings:
A recent analysis of the frequency with which “illegal immigrant” turns up in U.S. newspapers and wire services reveals that usage has declined since 2006―but the term still shows up fairly frequently, as it has for decades.
The term appeared 582 times in U.S. newspapers and wire services in a single week in October 2010, according to LexisNexis. That was down from 2006, when 743 examples turned up between October 10 and October 16. But it was still significantly higher than in 2000, when the term appeared only 107 times.
It gets better, not the findings, those are still pathetically out of touch, but the rendering of the study. Journalists will make up reasons to put things in a graph, with that said, viola: The Maryland Newsline did a wonderful graph that paints a telling picture. Over the course of 30 years (the AP Style Book would have asked me to spell the number out – I’m such a rebel.) the use of “illegal immigrant” has dominated the media.
The National Association of Hispanic Journalists has been lobbying for the use of “undocumented worker” for decades, but to little avail. Again the AJR:
“Between October 10 and October 16, the phrase was used 36 times in newspaper and wire service accounts―down from 69 times in October 2006, and nearly even with the 33 times in 2000.”
Down, but hardly a scratch. But what should we expect? I recently heard a veteran Latino colleague use the term “mojadito,” as if adding the diminutive suffix made it better. It took every ounce of my control not to smack the pendejote across his complacent face.
Why does it matter? Because the term frames the debate; because human beings cannot be illegal; because that one issue is at the center of our present navel-gazing about what it means to be American. It matters because words matter, and as the media serves to spread information the correct terminology is required.
There is one question that we should consider, you and I. In this crazy moment of digital storytelling and new information technology, where everyone carries a printing press in their cell phone and posts their whims on social media, what term will you use?
[Photo by allaboutgeorge]
