Vocabulary crisis hits BBC!
By Andrew Grant-Adamson • Jul 26th, 2007 • Category: Broadcasting, Journalism, LanguageAlistair Burnett, editor of the BBC’s World Tonight, has a good post on the overuse of the word crisis by journalists. On The Editors Blog he writes:
One of the values BBC journalism puts great emphasis on trying to live up to is accuracy. On top of that, language is the most basic of tools for a journalist. So using it accurately is essential. Though dramatic words help make our stories stand out, we have to guard very carefully against being tempted into hyperbole.
If he needs a little more ammunition to get his message across the his BBC colleagues, these are the first ten results from a Google News search for "crisis" on the BBC news site this morning:
- Tories ponder major crisis force (What on earth does that mean?)
- Debt crisis hits Chrysler buyout
- Warning of children’s TV ‘crisis’ (Note the disassociating quotes)
- Flood crisis operation launched
- In pictures: Darfur crisis
- Flood crisis test for Brown
- Leadership crisis hits Togo FA
- Land ‘no cure for housing crisis’
- Darfur crisis ’spilling into CAR’
- The “L” word (liquidity crisis, it seems)
Comments in brackets are mine. Burrnett’s point is made: what a lazy lot of headlines.
Andrew Grant-Adamson is Andrew Grant-Adamson is a journalist who now teaches a new generation of writers, subs and editors at the University of Westminster.
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Today the BBC announced that there is a crisis in the overuse of the word crisis. BBC editors will be gathering for crisis talks on the new crisis.
Just maybe it’s a case that there are actually a lot of crises going on the world? Or perhaps mildly, a lot of issues of serious concern?