A track of BBC's language

I really have no hopes from Fox News, CNN and such as far as the just use of language goes. The American media openly admits that they want to use connotative terms more than denotative ones, because it is indeed their utmost responsibility to engineer a thought (and not letting the readers cultivate one). A time when I was checking CNN website extremely regularly (probably every two minutes, for a 6 hrs) was when the shooting at Virginia Tech had happened. I had graduated from there only an year ago and I was concerned and dismayed not just because I still had friends studying there. 2 hrs after the shoot out happened, the news agencies had started checking the background of the student. The headlines of all major newspapers were reporting the details of Cho, the student responsible for the massacre. It was unveiled in a matter of minutes by CNN that, " The killer came from Korea at ten". The news item was up only for a few minutes, obviously because of its political incorrectness. But it was enough for me to infer how deeply aberrant our media correspondents really are. Saying that "the killer is an immigrant from Korea" is a lot different from saying "the killer came from Korea" even though the facts are exactly the same. The latter is akin to suggesting that Cho was a killer when he was 10. Him coming from Korea implies that the killers are more likely to come from Korea. Of course most people don't take it that far. But such subliminal manipulation does work most of the time (e.g. in engineering a sense of xenophobia in this case). However this happens to be a very poor example, the reason why the item was removed almost immediately. American media is full of such connotations in their reporting. Most of the times people won't realize that they are being fed the us-vs-them ideology while they are casually reading the newspapers. My own friends have gone from mid-conservative to extreme right just by choosing to be more informed about the world events. It is not hard to find an American who thinks that everyone except some European countries hates America. The propaganda machines once employed in South American and other satellite countries are now so mainstream that it is hard to be unprejudiced about almost anything. I myself have admittedly started to have a skewed view of the Muslim world, after being fed years and years of negative stereotyping.

I had assumed for a long time that the news in Britain and other European countries would be able to survive this extreme right scheme. But unfortunately that isn't the case for BBC. BBC has repeatedly followed the same tactics as major American media over time. I would've thought that this, apart from usual sarcasm was reserved only for the third world countries, but it surely isn't the case, after I started taking a closer look at the coverage of war and economy at BBC. ( For an example on the third-world country, if BBC finds some villagers in the most backward parts of Bihar, India performing a witchhunt, the headlines might be - Indian witch-hunt being curbed by the govt ) . I would try to log more real examples by editing this post, but here are a few recent ones : "Passenger's arm sucked down French train toilet" -Mind you, it is the french train toilet, not the train toilet in France ( but the british have a good sense of humor of course) Two Britons found guilty of having sex on a Dubai beach - The britons were guilty of breaking the law, not of having sex. The preference of word "downturn" over "recession" is actually official for BBC. That might I say, is only the tip of the iceberg. Updated (on Nov 01,2008 ): -- BBC just came up with an item that is very close to the example that I had provided: Pakistan "child wedding" halted -- Food body says 'avoid Irish pork' -- Ancient Persians 'gassed Romans' - As the report says it were the roman soldiers that were gassed. Indian Owl Problem. Apparently Indians like to sacrifice owls for their "black-magic" rituals. I hadn't known about it and still don't know anyone would would do something like that, but according to BBC that is something widely popular in India. Rather funny to see this 16th century style smearing of Indian "pagan" practices.