Back on the Get Religious Liberty beat yesterday, Mollie Ziegler Hemingway took a poke at our own Lauren Markoe's story about last week's National Religious Freedom Conference hosted by the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Actually, MZH allowed as how the story (published in WaPo) was "fine for the most part"; what bugged her was the use of quotation marks--"scare quotes"--around the words "religious liberty" in the headline and the lede. As in: "Activists gather to plot defense of ‘religious liberty.’"
Why are we scare quoting those words? And it’s not the Washington Post that originated the scare quotes (uh, this time). It’s on the RNS site, too. Someone really needs to explain to me the scare quote philosophy behind this, since we see it somewhat frequently. Nobody seems to scare quote any other word in this issue. It reads like “we want to mock your concerns” so if that’s not the intent, I’d just suggest stopping the scare quotes ASAP.
Here goes. There is a fairly vigorous debate going on at the moment about whether religious liberty is really under attack by the government and whether those who say they are defending it are really motivated by concern about religious liberty--as opposed to, perhaps, desire to defeat President Obama in November.
Among the reasons Wikipedia gives for using scare quotes is "to alert the reader that the word or phrase...should be understood to include caveats to the conventional meaning." In this case, the caveat is that the National Religious Freedom Conference might not be exactly what it seems to be. Covering the conference for NCR on his blog, Michael Sean Winters--who really does consider religious liberty (in the Roman Catholic sense) to be under attack--conveyed just such a suspicion: "What depresses me about such events as this is that it is hard to miss the partisan agenda at work, even if the cause is a good one."
So the scare quotes are there to alert the reader that religious liberty may not actually be in need of defense and that the "defenders" may actually be up to something else. Get the philosophy?
Kevin Eckstrom | May 31, 2012 | 9:37am
Mark makes a good point here. And I’m troubled by Mollie’s not-so-subtle implications. Mollie’s implying that we’re using scare quotes as a way of signaling our disagreement with the religious liberty cause. Not so.
We put “religious liberty” in not-scary quotes simply to signal to the reader that this is not a neutral term. As Mark pointed out, there’s vast disagreement about whether religious liberty or religious freedom is, in fact, under attack. Mollie may think so, and the Catholic bishops may think so, but that’s not enough. There are countless others on the other side who see this as a fight over contraception, or government mandates, or health care, or whatever else you want to call it.
If the headline had been “Activists gather to plot defense of religious liberty,” that would be equally loaded, because it would signal to the other side that we, too, share the idea that this is a fight over religious liberty. It’s not that we agree or disagree; it simply says that we’re not picking sides on this one.
So, Mollie, no, there is not universal agreement that this is a fight over religious liberty. That’s why we put it in quotes, to signal that this is their term, not ours, and not everyone else’s.
Marty36 | May 31, 2012 | 12:25pm
Thanks for taking this on. As Kevin points out, “religious liberty” is a political term at this point, in the same way “marriage equality” is a political term. It’s responsible journalism to point out that the reader is about to be sucked into a political disagreement and strategy cooked-up in some board room and not be co-opted by the terms used by one side.
Mollie has never seen a conservative talking-point she wasn’t willing to accept as fact, so of course she she’s “religious liberty” as a term that is beyond dispute. She participates in events put on by combatants in the “religious liberty” war, so it’s no wonder she is using their terms. Mattingly has the same problem, working for an organization that is involved in litigating “religious liberty” disputes. That’s the problem when you pretend to be an umpire when you are actually a player in the dispute.
bobbyross | May 31, 2012 | 1:06pm
In the headline, the scare quotes were around “religious liberty.” In the lede, the chosen scary words were “religious freedom.”
BobSmietana | May 31, 2012 | 2:18pm
The quotes around “religious liberty” didn’t work for me.
The intent was to say “this is the term that activists use” and that makes sense. But the message I got was “These activists” are lying.” I know that’s not the message RNS wanted to send.
Wonder if there was a better way to address the dispute nature of the term religious liberty in this case.
Mark Silk | May 31, 2012 | 2:26pm
Would it have worked better for you, Bob, if the headline had read: “Activists Gather to Plot ‘defense of religious liberty’”?
Marty36 | May 31, 2012 | 5:28pm
Based on Hemingway’s twitter feed, it appears she isn’t taking your criticism all that seriously.
http://twitter.com/MZHemingway/status/208247275816878080
Looks like the “media critic” isn’t so good about being on the receiving end of media criticism.
BobSmietana | May 31, 2012 | 5:59pm
Mark—I’m just not a fan of partial quotes. I think a straight Activists Hold Conference on Religious Liberty would have worked
CSPAN did something like that - http://www.c-span.org/Events/Faith-Leaders-Meet-at-Conference-on-Religious-Freedom/10737430958-4/
Mark Silk | May 31, 2012 | 6:08pm
But that doesn’t address the disputed nature of the term. The headline was not a partial quote but a scare quote—or, as I’d prefer, a caveat quote.
BobSmietana | May 31, 2012 | 10:43pm
Mark—the conference was about religious liberty- that was the name of the conference and the topic at hand. The dispute comes over whether or not the organizers have a legitimate concern about religious liberty or whether this was a political event. That can be reported in the story without the caveat quotes.
I’m surprised you didn’t take on the post that preceded Mollies—called “USA Today’s Islam-free 9/11” where George Conger said that the laughed while reading about Muslims facing challenges to their religious liberty to build mosques.
BobSmietana | May 31, 2012 | 10:43pm
He laughed - not “the laughed”
dan bloom | Jul 24, 2012 | 10:17pm
Dan,
This is very interesting. The first time I heard the term “Scare Quotes” (used here to quote the quote and not to scare or smear anybody).
This kind of subtle or subliminal messages do work well on people’s subconscious. Scare quotes subconsciously alert readers that something is not right within the quotation marks.
Thanks for the forwarding.
dan bloom | Jul 24, 2012 | 10:20pm
Mark, In the long run-up to the American presidential elections in November,
an epidemic of so-called “scare quotes” is turning political punditry
and commentary
by those on the left and right into a mockery of democracy and
liberty. And the epidemic not only threatens to infect and undermine
the entire political
process of this country, but it is also invading the religious realm
as well. When someone on the left or right doesn’t like the language
of the opposing side,
the writer often put the words in scare quotes, to signal to the
reader that he or she is of a very different opinion, and as a result,
nothing gets resolved and
only more confusion and noise results. When a writer talking about
Jewish issues of the Orthodox or Conservative Jews or Reform
‘‘platforms’’ (see, I just
used a scare quote to give you an example of how can be used!), he or
she often resorts to the scare quotes methodology to score some points
with
those who already agree or to mock those he or she dislikes on the
other side of the pulpit.
The scare quotes epidemic must be stopped, and strong measures must be
taken to rein in this sloppy and incorrect use of language and
punctuation. Mollie
Ziegler Hemingway, writing in a recent blog post for GetReligion and
headlined “Scare quote epidemic spreads to ‘natural’ family planning,”
referred to our earlier
discussion of the scare quotes problem, noting: “It’s been almost a
month since a reader sent in a discussion of the use of scare quotes
[that appeared in] the San Diego Jewish World.”
Ziegler Hemingway, a Christian blogger, said that an editor she knows
“with many years in the business sent along the latest example of the
odd use of scare quotes —although he called them ...“smear quotes.”
She explained that the example came from the Religion News Service,
which recently had sent out an article with the headline “Amid
political battle, Catholic bishops promote ‘natural’ family planning.”
When the same article ran in the Huffington Post, she noted, it had
the headline “Catholic Bishops Promote ‘Natural’ Family Planning Amid
Battle Over Contraception Mandate” with the loaded word “natural” in
the ubiquitous and ill-coined ‘‘scare quotes’’ term now embedded in
newsroom cultures of both leftwingers and rightwingers, conservatives
and liberals—and in Jewish circles, Orthodox and Conservative,
Reform and non-practicing, agnostics and haredim.
She noted that the article began this way: “Amid a battle with
President Obama over a new contraception mandate, the nation’s Roman
Catholic bishops are promoting ‘natural’ family planning—but will
their flock take heed?”
Ziegler Hemingway also noted that when she first pointed out ‘‘the
rather curious scare quote policy of Religion News Service (in which
‘religious liberty’ was getting the treatment), we got some messages
defending it. From RNS contributor [and Jewish author] Mark Silk we
were told “the scare quotes are there to alert the reader that
religious liberty may not actually be in need of defense and that the
‘defenders’ may actually be up to something else.” Silk suggested that
the true motivation of people advocating for religious liberty was
partisan. And RNS editor Kevin Eckstrom backed this up telling
GetReligion that “there is not universal agreement that this is a
fight over religious liberty. That’s why we put it in quotes, to
signal that this is their term, not ours, and not everyone else’s.”
You get the message, I think. The epidemic of scare quotes is turning
America into a culture of name-calling, scare-quote throwing shouters.
Scare quotes now appear regularly
in once scare-quote-free publications such as the New York Times, the
Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, not to mention the New
Jersey Jewish News and wire
stories from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in New York. America, both
left and right, of all religious stripes, has gone ‘‘scare quotes”
crazy.
How stop the epidemic? A recent “B.C.” comic strip in the daily
newspapers on July 18 nationwide said it well. We are living now in a
culture where liberals and conservatives drink water
at separate water fountains in the park, the cartoonist implied—
sarcastically—one labeled “Conservatives Only” and the other
labelled “Liberals Only.” This kind of scare quotes ‘‘scaremongering’‘
(scare quotes mine)
must be contained somehow, or the contagion will only get worse.
When a simple three-panel comic strip tells Americans to wake up and
look at what the ‘‘shouters’’ are doing to our political and religious
culture, it’s time for all of us to wake up. No more
separate drinking fountains. We are one people, under God,
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. No?
Disagree with each other if you want to, dear pundits of the left and
right, but without the scare quotes, please.
.
dan bloom | Jul 24, 2012 | 10:21pm
How stop the epidemic? A recent “B.C.” comic strip in the daily
newspapers on July 18 nationwide said it well. We are living now in a
culture where liberals and conservatives drink water
at separate water fountains in the park, the cartoonist implied—
sarcastically—one labeled “Conservatives Only” and the other
labelled “Liberals Only.” This kind of scare quotes ‘‘scaremongering’‘
(scare quotes mine)
must be contained somehow, or the contagion will only get worse.
When a simple three-panel comic strip tells Americans to wake up and
look at what the ‘‘shouters’’ are doing to our political and religious
culture, it’s time for all of us to wake up. No more
separate drinking fountains. We are one people, under God,
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. No?
dan bloom | Jul 24, 2012 | 10:29pm
Mark, your idea to call them CAVEAT QUOTES is a good one,.I prefer that to the old and ill-coined and meaningless term SCARE QUOTES. Read the emails i sent you sir.—dan bloom,
dan bloom | Jul 24, 2012 | 10:48pm
Cuba dissident ‘forced off road’ to death, says family
BBC headline use of caveat quotes. SEE?