There's been some talk online recently about the importance of real time feedback for companies on issues affecting their brand and reputation. I saw an article saying that real time opinion polling was increasingly becoming a major part of opinion pollsters' work, for example Gap recently did a U turn on a branding decision based on quick and sharp criticism from online.
One of the key principles of crisis management is when you've got something totally wrong, admit it quickly and openly and and move the goalposts and your opponents on by talking about what you're going to do next. Which is why it baffles me that the Wall Street Journal continues to use the phrase "Polish death camp" or "Polish concentration" camps to refer to Nazi run concentration camps in areas of Nazi occupied Poland. (see here and here) It's lazy journalism at its worst and even more significantly the WSJ refuses to apologise! They've made themselves look like prize tits and for no gain whatsoever.
Capital 'P' for Polish please. Otherwise we're talking about something you put on your shoes or on the floor :-)
ReplyDeleteThanks Michael. Type in haste and repent at leisure.... shameful.
ReplyDeleteIt's the New York Times this time, not the WSJ. Storozynski also complained about the Washington Post. This is not a campaign against a newspaper, it is aimed at changing the English language in the USA.
ReplyDeleteI know that I am alone in thinking like this, but to understand a bit more, clear your mind of any emotional response to the phrase and read the Washington Post Story. It targets a Bishop who has denied the holocaust and recommends he visits death camps to learn the truth. The term 'Polish Camps' clearly refers in the context to their existence in current Poland. Storozynski's complaint calls this a "misstatement" and "incorrect", but in fact the article reference is 100% accurate within the normal use of UK and US English.
Clearly, some people find the term offensive, which is (to me) a good reason for not using the phrase unless there is a particularly good reason for it. However, if I had written any of these articles (or been the editor) and got the distorted abuse that Storozynski lets fly - "Holocaust revisionism", I would not only not apologise, I would consider the guy some sort of paranoid nutter. Once other Polish and Polish sympathetic voices join in one might hope that the message of "it's offensive" gets through, but if they are routinely abusive, it may be more likely the 'paranoid nutters' will be reinforced. It may just be my upbringing, but I would instead have far more sympathy for 'understand why you used it, but (explain, explain) we find it offensive'.
As for his "The media's slander of Poland: Ignorance, lazy editing, or malicious libel?", we can look at his own writing. In his Washington Post comment 'Calling them "Polish camps" is so offensive to Poles that in 2007 UNESCO changed the name of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp to "Auschwitz Birkenau. German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940-1945)'. Yet in his New York Times comment he refers to the 'Auschwitz killing factory'. Ignorance, lazy editing, malicious libel or sheer hypocrisy? His article is clear about what he means, so it doesn't matter. US journalists are clear in what they mean, but it does.
Pan Steeva, a telling point about who gets to 'earn' the right to use words in the way they want to name the concentration camp there. Just to clarify I refer to the WSJ articles that have used the term but perhaps I should have referred to the other papers and CNN as well. Personally I believe "Auschwitz killing factory" would be acceptable on the basis of the Germanised name.
ReplyDeleteRe-reading the WSJ article again (http://online.wsj.com/article he /SB10001424052748703866704575224800697827576.html) I agree you could be forgiven for believing the journalist had no conscious desire to associate Poland with the camps. It's still terrible, terrible journalism though. One look through the comments pages shows that people have - in a reasonable manner - been asking for an edit to the article for 159 days and counting. I'm all for reasoned criticism but there's a time when you need to send flares up.
Sorry to come back, but aren't you making the same mistake as US journalists and myself in thinking that 'Polish' means 'in Poland', when what it really means is 'organised and run by ethnic Poles'? Not only did the journalist want to 'associate' Auschwitz with Poland, she consciously told us where it is. Her crime amounts to her failing to understand what "Polish' really means?
ReplyDeletePan Steeva,
ReplyDeleteI am a little confused. Isn't the danger lying in the fact that "Polish concentration camps" could mean either "in Poland" or "organised and run by ethnic Poles" that anyone who didn't know their history might assume the latter? I can forgive a 13 year old if that is what he assumed from reading "Polish death camps" but not journalists for not realising the danger, and the power, of this journalistic shorthand.