Watch your language

As we enter the new year, journalists need to reassert vigilance about the words we use and whether our choices play down the severity of conditions other humans face. Too often, the humanity of our sources gets diminished in the rush to report.

One area that most concerns me is how the Trump administration plans to approach immigration following the campaign pledge to deport millions. Already we see terms like “border-area ranch” being used to refer to a Texas facility that is proposed as a detention center.

This isn’t the first time the U.S. has used language to create a gulf to separate people the administration has deemed to be a threat. During World War II, Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order that led to the forced detention of more than 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry. Two-thirds of the detainees were U.S. citizens; they lost their freedoms, their property, and their livelihoods.

For decades afterward, what happened on U.S. soil to our fellow Americans was regularly referred to as “internment,” which disguised the traumas inflicted on intergenerational families and caused long-term epigenetic harm. It wasn’t until 2022 that The Associated Press updated its stylebook guidance to note that the shameful events of WWII should not be considered internment but incarceration.

Journalists can fall into a trap of parroting the language provided by officials, whether that’s law enforcement, the courts, politicians, academics, or subject-matter experts. It’s essential to take the time to think through the nuance of words we use in our coverage (and the ones we choose to omit). Copying “official” phrasing without providing further context might unintentionally advance a one-sided perspective.

Multiple resources exist to help us navigate topics with which we might lack familiarity, including The Marshall Project’s Language Project for guidance on how to report on the carceral system and Street Sense’s Homeless Crisis Reporting Project. Language, Please offers an overview for a range of topics that require greater sensitivity and compassion in news coverage.

If we go into 2025 without applying critical thinking about how the words we use have the power to illuminate — and obfuscate — then we’re failing in a key duty as journalists: to inform the public with accurate information. And accuracy means providing dignity to people in our coverage.