Summer 2000

Elements of Style

By STEVE FRIESS

Adam Ramirez of The Miami Herald could hardly believe what he was reading, even though he wrote it himself. Sort of.

His Dec. 20 piece on the growing influence of Latinos on Broward County politics appeared on the front of the local section in the newspaper's Broward edition almost verbatim as Ramirez had filed it.

Yet when the minority affairs reporter got to work and scoured the Miami-Dade County edition of the paper, he almost couldn't find the same article. It was buried inside the local pages, which wasn't unusual, but it also featured strikingly different headlines, too. For Broward readers, the story was "Latino activists: Our time is coming," but in Miami-Dade, it was, "Hispanics eye greater role in Broward." On 11 more occasions, too, copy editors for the Miami-Dade edition had removed the term "Latino" and replaced it with "Hispanic."

Ramirez wasn't the only one who noticed. Luis De Rosa, president of Broward's Puerto Rican Chamber of Commerce, phoned the journalist that day. De Rosa lives in Miami-Dade but works in Broward, so he'd seen himself called by one name in the copy that landed on his doorstep and another in the version he picked up at the office. "Hey, great story," De Rosa told Ramirez, "but I just noticed this. Why did they do that?"

Ramirez knew why, but he wondered if maybe this was the example that could spark a change. The paper's policy was to use "Hispanic" exclusively in Miami, but to allow "Latino" in Broward, out of a long-held belief that "Hispanic" is preferred by the huge population of Miami-area residents who either migrated from Spanish-speaking nations or descended from immigrants of those countries.

Alarmingly, in that zealous effort to follow policy, the Herald copy desk did more than simply refer to people with a different moniker than they'd asked Ramirez to use. An editor also altered the substance of the piece, substituting the term "Latino-backed candidates" used by Ramirez with "Hispanic candidates." And, on another instance in the Miami-Dade version, the term "black" was replaced with "African-American," which actually is a violation of Herald style regardless of where it is published.

Ramirez thought it was time to ask the Herald's style committee chairman, Steve Rothaus, to convene a meeting to reconsider the policy.

"We were adhering to a rule that is outdated, and we were enforcing it in a somewhat erratic manner," said Ramirez, who is Latino. "This invisible line across the community isn't as important to our readers as it is to us in the newsroom. People aren't as staunch about what they're called anymore."

Rothaus' committee agreed. Their verdict: A recommendation to Managing Editor Larry Olmstead that the terms "Hispanic" and "Latino" be permitted as synonyms in all editions and that, whenever possible, sources dictate which terms apply to them.

"We believe now that ‘Hispanic' and ‘Latino' can be used much more interchangably now than before," Rothaus said. "The world has narrowed in terms of communication. Spanish-language television stations and newsweeklies are using the terms interchangeably, so people here in South Florida are now used to seeing both."

Ramirez appreciated his victory, but said he's surprised a newspaper like the Herald, serving such an overwhelmingly Hispanic/Latino audience, would take until 2000 to arrive at "a good, progressive policy."

"Someone should be able to call themselves what they want to be called," he said. "Freedom of identification is what we're reaching for." ***

That is the guiding concept of some revolutionary additions to The New York Times stylebook, republished in November 1999 for the first time since 1976. Many of the minority entries represent seismic changes from earlier editions, even though Assistant Managing Editor Allan M. Seigal noted the "new" rules were imposed by internal memorandum years before this edition's public debut.

Still, even Seigal acknowledged the book's entries on gays, Hispanics, Asians, blacks and women are a "landmark in acknowledging common usage" for both his paper as well as other groups and publications that use The New York Times' guide as a reference. "The principle thing we did was lay out the desire of people to choose -- within the range of common usage -- whether it's African-American or black, whether it's Hispanic or Latino," Seigal said. "We really are just catching up and expressing the character of the paper as it has existed over the years."

This moment is even more significant because the industry's best-used reference, the Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual, is still silent on several of these flashpoints, be they "homosexual" versus "gay and lesbian," or "Hispanic" versus "Latino." The lack of guidance by AP on these words and others related to minorities inspires uneven usage of terms in newspapers and magazines around that country, a problem that is supposed to be avoided by the international consistency imposed by style rules.

AP Deputy Managing Editor Tom Kent said some of that may change this year as an internal group involved with the stylebook braces to take up the Hispanic-Latino question and possibly also the debate between "sexual orientation" and "sexual preference." Left behind on the Y2K agenda is likely to be any new guidance on use of the words "homosexual" or "gay lifestyle."

"I don't think there's a lot of controversy over using ‘homosexual,'" Kent said. "There might be about the word ‘gay,' so it's quite appropriate that the stylebook give the definition of the word ‘gay.' ... In many cases, we don't (declare a preferred word.) I think that as language develops, we might tend to use one term more or less frequently, but I don't feel the need to legislate in every case which is preferred."

But if the AP isn't willing to act as semantical Solomon, many wondered who else would. "That is the AP stylebook editor's job," snapped Elizabeth Wissner-Gross, a former AP and Newsday reporter who last year published "Unbiased: Editing in a Diverse Society" to offer direction on terminology for dozens of minority issues. "The language is always evolving, and it is their job to monitor the language."

In the case of the "homosexual" question, the new Times stylebook sides firmly with gay and lesbian activists who for years have complained that the term is cold, clinical and dehumanizing. "The community I live in and work in doesn't call itself the ‘homosexual' community, so to use that word is just not reality," said Cathy Renna of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. And even at the staid Wall Street Journal, where there's never been an official declaration of preferred lexicon in this regard, stylebook editor Paul Martin insisted, "I don't see ‘homosexual' in the paper hardly ever anymore. As a rule, you see the word ‘gays.'"

Of course, having a style guide isn't worth a thing if journalists ignore the written rules. One of the most progressive in-house guides anywhere in the media is found at CNN, which not only explictly picks ‘gay' over ‘homosexual' but also directs photojournalists to "make a conscious effort to avoid using visual images that present a stereotypical picture of the gay community. When covering a gay pride march, for example, don't automatically focus on drag queens or ‘dykes on bikes.' "

But recent transcripts of CNN reporting indicate those stern dictates are often disregarded, routinely allowing the use of the word "homosexual" to checker their coverage of the Vermont Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage, the trials of those who killed Wyoming student Matthew Shepard and Fort Campbell, Ky., soldier Barry Winchell and California's decision to allow gay couples to adopt. Furthermore, some CNN talk show hosts have insisted on using the term 'homosexual' and ‘lifestyle,' too, even after some staffers asked them not to do so. Spokesman David Bittler did not return several calls for comment. ***

The Times' new rules, which Siegal is determined to have implemented, offer more explanation than most style guides typically do. The term "sexual orientation" is preferred over "sexual preference" because the latter term "carries the disputed implication that sexuality is a matter of choice." The term "gay rights," the book says, "may invite resentment by implying ‘special rights' that are denied other citizens. The advocates prefer phrases like ‘equal rights' or ‘civil rights' for gay people. But the shorter phrase is in wide use and often indispensible for confined headlines. When it occurs, define the issue precisely."

Precision is certainly the preferred method for referring to any minority or minority issue for most publications. On the Hispanic-Latino matter, The New York Times guide now urges that "when a more specific identification is available -- Cuban, Puerto Rican, Mexican-American -- use it." The Herald's style, even before Ramirez raised his questions, also admonished reporters to "be specific."

That's identical advice to the direction offered by Asian American Journalists Association President Catalina Camia for cases where journalists write about people of or descending from Asian nations. For years, Asian groups fought the use of the term "Oriental" with some success; it's discouraged now in both The New York Times and Associated Press style guides and is largely obsolete in the American media.

That doesn't mean there's not cause for alarm in some words used to describe Asians and Asian-Americans, Camia said. Among them are terms like "inscrutable," which implies untrustworthiness, "exotic," which invokes a "passive, Suzi Wong image" and "model minority," which "some people might think is complimentary, but it ignores a lot of struggle of Asian-Pacific Americans to do well in school and start our own businesses. It's just inaccurate and stereotypical."

AAJA, in fact, plans to republish its coverage handbook, which includes a style section, because of ire among members at how the recent Los Alamos nuclear secrets scandal and the Clinton-Gore Chinese fundraising uproar were handled. At the height of the Los Alamos spy case, AAJA issued a news advisory that expressed dismay at editorials like one in The New Mexican of Sante Fe that made fun of Asian accents and referenced a Fu Manchu character.

Kent said the AP Stylebook can't go about listing all offensive words and adjectives because it would make the book huge, and he also believes much of what is offensive is common sense anyway. CBS Vice President Linda Mason agreed, noting her news division doesn't even have a stylebook but rather addresses these issues "by osmosis, as things are pointed out to us." But Wissner-Gross said that this method leaves a lot to chance, and she noted AP's book does include a listing of various inadvisable Native American terms considered stereotypical. That book also lists "American Indians" as the preferred term, though, which Wissner-Gross called "a little backwards."

These issues can divide a newsroom, to be sure, from the smallest to the largest. The Hispanic v. Latino matter prompted as much racuous debate at Northwestern University's student newspaper, The Daily Northwestern, back in 1991 as it did at the Arizona Daily Star of Tucson, Ariz., last year. At the campus paper, a Latino student editor lashed out angrily at the otherwise non-Latino editorial board for settling on "Hispanic" unless a person specifically requested "Latino," while in Tucson the joke around the newsroom last year was that eventually the paper would wind up referring to people in the U.S. illegally as "unexpected guests."

These debates are healthy, said National Association of Hispanic Journalists President Nancy Baca, whose group does not offer a style guide as both AAJA and the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association do. Baca cautioned against the AP offering a ruling that sides with either moniker because "it should go newspaper by newspaper. A lot of terms are used regionally. In general in the Southwest, ‘Latino' is used quite a bit more than ‘Hispanic.'"

Still, the NAHJ Board said there is some consensus that the term ‘illegal alien' is xenophobic, so Baca applauded The New York Times entry that discourages it as "a rather sinster-sounding" term and CNN's similar entry. The Herald, though, allows the term without commentary on "alien." None of these guides warn journalists against using the term "illegal" by itself, an important distinction for Baca because "people are not illegal. They may be in the country illegally, but they're not illegal."

Instead, though, there is some significant dispute because The New York Times dismisses the term "undocumented workers" as a euphenism, while CNN and The Herald both list it for possible use if it is accurate and refers not to all illegal immigrants but specifically to people working in the U.S. without papers.

Blacks have a similar concern about term "racial preference" in reference to Affirmative Action programs. The National Association of Black Journalists, in fact, issued a scathing advisory in 1995 in which it observed that the day after a presidential announcement on affirmative action, 14 of 18 newspapers surveyed used "preference" "after it had become clear that the term had become pejorative." NABJ member Richard Prince, a former Washington Post copy editor and media monitor for the group, said the performance isn't much better now. Prince also found it strange that the Arizona Republic recently opted to start capitalizing "white" and "black," although the logic was that "Caucasian," "Negro" and other such terms are always capped. ***

Gay terminology is somewhat new to this field of debate. Siegal called the changes in verbage regarding sexuality over the past decade to be second only to those in technology, reflecting a dramatic increase in how largely gay issues loom in the public consciousness in this day of gays in the military, Matthew Shepard and "Will and Grace."

But now that the Times has digested these societal changes and canonized them, yet another frontier in stylebook evolution may be looming: The transgendered issue. Siegal said it's unlikely either his book or an internal memo would speak soon on how to refer to people who viewed their own sex as different than their anatomy. "I don't think the phenomena is so widespread in the news that letting people do it on autopilot is a good idea yet. The whole notion of transgender is not in every day language yet and not ready to decree it."

The AP has decreed it, ruling that a person is to be referred to by their biological gender in pronouns until the person actually undergoes the transsexual operation. But transgendered advocates argue people ought to be called by the gender they see themselves as, following the principle laid out by Siegal and others on terms used for other minorities.

New York Times copy editor Donna Cartwright, a male-to-female transsexual and two-decade veteran of the paper, hasn't raised the issue with Seigal yet, but she said it's clear that the newspaper suffers some uneven application of the rules. Cartwright pointed to a September 1999 piece a California teacher who was barred after a transsexual operation as an example of exemplary coverage and writing for any newspaper, a piece routinely used by transgendered advocates of how best to write on the subject. But then Cartwright pointed to coverage in December of gay Army private Barry Winchell's death and noted that the pre-op male-to-female transsexual that Winchell was dating at the time of his death was referred to as a "he" and a "female impersonator."

GLAAD's Renna said a meeting Jan. 18 with AP stylebook editor Norm Goldstein on this matter was comfortable and constructive. Renna, who attended with a representative from the transsexual advocacy group GenderPac, was so heartened by the thoughtful consideration -- albeit with no promises of change -- that hearing Seigal's comments on the matter was discouraging. "The New York Times is a leader in coverage of transgendered issues, they've done more coverage than anyone else," Renna said. "It's fascinating that (Seigal) would say that. If that's any indication, it's pretty clear we have an awfully long way to go on this."

Seigal didn't rule out anything, and he acknowledged his paper is more influenced by internal discussions from his own staffers as well as what he and others observe about the culture at large. At papers large and small, it seems that that is largely how word usage evolves.

"The bottom line is this: Newspaper style is generally reflected by the people producing the news," said Long Beach (Calif.) Press-Telegram Executive News Editor David Heitz, who is gay. "If you look at my (copy) desk, you have an African-American, an Asian, a couple of gay white guys, a couple of Jewish employees and a couple of heterosexual white guys. My point is, the desk is diverse enough to make sure the terminology and the context is accurate and non-offensive. That's the only way it can really happen."

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