Greg Sargent has a piece at Talking Points Memo on the emptiness of the journalistic uses of the terms "middle", and the correspondent emptiness of the words "left" and "right". Following his lead (alas), I would like to suggest that there are other terms we need to force the media to stop using because they have become meaningless as well.
It has been commonplace since the early 1900's to dismiss much blather about "liberal", "conservative", "left", and "right" as so much left-over baggage from an era where they might have meant something. Their continued use has not pinned down their spcific meaning any more than simply defining them would, and most of us are left wondering what in the world they refer to in the world around us when journalists, pundits, and politicians throw them around, because they do not correspond to anything we might understand about what is actually happening. Labels are useless if they are empty of meaning. They cloud our understanding rather than enhance it (perhaps that is the goal?).
There are other words I would add to the list. When President Bush speaks of "victory" in Iraq, or of "defeat", when he brings up a "new plan", or a "policy", journalists should not just transcribe these words without thought, but press him and others in the Administration as to what they mean. As far as I can discern, neither "victory" nor "defeat" have any referent in the situation in Iraq. Equally non-existent is anything like a "plan" or "policy" as these have traditionally been understood. If there is a policy, the American people need to hear it. If there is a plan, we need to know at least the outlines of this supposed plan besides merely sending more targets for the Iraqi factions to kill and maim (for myself, I will cease to use the term "insurgent" because the situation in iraq has degraded so far that there is no "insurgency" in the singular, but multiple factions killing each other and Americans). Indeed, this is neither a plan nor a policy, but the simple hope that the sheer weight of numbers will create a situation favorable to the United States.
Of course, "success" of this "policy" would not be victory, nor would the failure of the plan be defeat because neither word has any meaning in Iraq right now. We are left, then, back at the beginning, demanding answers with real meaning, real meat on their verbal bones. Perhaps it is too much for us to ask mainstream journalists to either press the Administration to elaborate or to simply stop using these words all together. I think, however, we need to continue to push them for clarity. That would be the function of the press in America, one would think - clear up the messiness so that we can understand, and on this understanding, act.
