Regret the Error

Over the past couple of weeks, Regret readers have been debating the necessity of this NPR apology:

In our newscast at 9:30 a.m. ET on Feb. 14, the phrase “dark continent” was used by one of our newscasters in reference to President Bush’s trip to Africa. This was totally inappropriate and offensive, and we apologize. We will apologize on air in the 9:30 a.m. ET newscast on Monday, Feb. 18, for allowing such an antiquated and pejorative term to air.

Alicia C. Shepard, the NPR ombudsman, has now weighed in with her opinion. From her column:

…Did NPR owe an apology?
After the apology ran, some listeners were infuriated, thinking it unnecessary, claiming that NPR had succumbed to political correctness.
“As much as I believe in racial sensitivity, I draw the line at torturing the language or censoring our use of it to accommodate the hypersensitivities of the ignorant,” wrote Don Howe, a corporate trainer in Los Angeles. “NPR has done its mainly informed and well-educated audience a disservice by caving into a grossly misplaced sense of liberal guilt. I only hope you don’t apologize the next time someone uses the word ‘niggardly’.”
Some may recall that in 1999, a white Washington, D.C. city government official resigned after he used the word niggardly in a budget discussion with staffers. While the word means miserly with no racial connotations, some incorrectly assume it derives from a certain word that is definitely out of bounds.
“I think the bottom line is that so many people use code words and phrases to express prejudice- because outright racism can get you fired from many jobs nowadays- that people are understandably suspicious of any turn of phrase which hints at a racial stereotype,” Eric Deggans, media critic for the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times told NPR. “So the broadcaster may not be guilty of anything beyond some ignorance in anticipating how her words might sound. But writers and editors have to be a bit more careful about how these phrases sound.”
Some word meanings evolve over time and become accepted. Others like “dark continent” retain their power.
“Even when not consciously selected, language that diminishes one group at the expense of others wields great power in naturalizing unequal power relations,” Prof. Martin A. Berger, who specializes in gender and race at the University of California, Santa Cruz, told NPR. ” It’s less useful to talk about ‘racist’ people, than to see how racialized patterns of thought and speech are structured into our lives.”
So should NPR have apologized?
Given the intense listener reaction, it would have been arrogant for NPR to ignore the use of the controversial term. But in not offering any serious explantion for its apology, NPR missed an opportunity for a broader discussion — on air, online, or both — about the power of language.

Given the interesting debate that has taken place on this site, Shepard’s last point is an excellent one.

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