Karl Witter sent this voluminous list of suggestions along:<\/p>\n
\nBanned images:
\n<\/strong><\/p>\nThe intrepid reporter standing at a beach’s high-water mark<\/strong> in the onslaught of a hurricane or other coastal storm. I’m waiting to see a wave crashing over the reporter, and, after subsiding, the
\ncamera op reeling in a snapped cable with no mic or reporter attached.<\/li>\nThe transitional bantering<\/strong> in which news anchors, meteorologists and sports anchors appear on screen together for several seconds.<\/li>\n Banned words (not including spillover from the corporate lexicon):<\/strong><\/p>\n
“And you’re not going to believe this<\/strong>…”, “Get
\nready for this…”, or similar, prefacing a TV news story which
\nwill shock us with needlessly tragic human suffering or bureaucratic
\nnincompoopery.<\/li>\n“Grow<\/strong>” as a verb done by the subject to the object. One grows neither the economy nor a dog. One can feed a puppy, house-train it, and take it to the vet. Then it grows.<\/li>\n “Random violence<\/strong>” isn’t; lightning is. The phrase
\nseems to have been invented for contemporary street and blue-collar
\ncrimes, and gangs. Old-fashioned American shootouts, from the Old
\nWest to the Roaring Twenties, needed no such distinction for the accidental
\nshooting of non-involved bystanders.<\/li>\n“The mother of all…<\/strong>” is this decade’s mother
\nof all cliches.<\/li>\n“Abortion clinic<\/strong>,” “abortion doctor<\/strong>“. Hmm…nobody’s called John Salvi’s victims “abortion receptionists” yet. Hey, I’m just glad the press hasn’t adapted the right-to-lifers’ terminology and started calling women’s health clinics “fetus
\nfarms”! (Half-kidding but barely.)<\/li>\n“xxx-ly correct<\/strong>” when one really means “just
\nplain accurate and right.” Included uses of note are geographically
\ncorrect, historically correct, and, the winning stretch-of-phrase,
\norinthologically correct.<\/li>\n“Politically correct<\/strong>” applied ex-post-facto to
\nanything. Someday a journalist will describe the Underground Railroad,
\nthe Pure Food and Drug Act, or the Taylor Act as “P.C.”
\nActually, “politically correct” is a “feely” word
\nwith no definition anymore. Restrain its use to the original higher-education
\nmeaning and trash it in other arenas.<\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Karl Witter sent this voluminous list of suggestions along: Banned images: The intrepid reporter standing at a beach’s high-water mark in the onslaught of a hurricane or other coastal storm. I’m waiting to see a wave crashing over the reporter, … Continue reading