Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Pirates in the 21st century

When you hear the word "pirate," what image pops into your head? Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom? Eye patches and bottles of rum in the 18th century? Sitting on a slow moving boat through a ride in Disney World?

I know when I first heard about the Somalian piracy problem, that's what I thought of. When you are not educated about a story, you might think it's a joke, or a "bright" for the page. Disney has taught us that pirates are fun and entertaining. People dress up as them for Halloween. Video games are made about them.

But these modern-day pirates are serious.

They are hijacking ships with oil, taking hostages and asking for ransom money. If ships have to be rerouted, the cost of oil is going to increase because the cost to deliver the oil will increase. They are living lavish lives and costing countries a lot of money.

As editors, we need to think about the effect one word can have on a reader. We need to make sure headlines are clear and written to convey how serious the story is. We need to make sure stories are edited so that the point of the story is transparent.

3 comments:

Jon said...

I agree. In one of the headlines I wrote for class today on this story, I couldn't help but use "pirate ship." Even to use something like "pirate vessel," "pirate boat," or just plain "pirates" would carry a certain connotation that would not lend to the seriousness of this story.

I think that in some cases, especially with "pirate," words pick up a certain connotation when they are not frequently used in everyday language as they are used in the news.

For the longest time, I thought reading about martian things was funny because I immediately thought of Marvin the Martian. Although he was a character from Mars (or planet X, in some cases), whenever I read science pieces discussing either traveling to or inhabiting the red planet, I would think of a little cartoon running around with an Acme disintegrator gun.

Colleen said...

I agree that we should try to convey how serious something is, but I think that it can be hard to do that just in a headline. Obviously, we shouldn't deliberately make a lighthearted headline to go with a serious story, but I think that any headline with the word pirate in it is going to conjure up visions of swashbuckling Disney-like characters. Unfortunately, we have only a limited amount of space in which to write a headline, so we have to make the best of what we've got. Plus, you have to be careful of putting your opinion into a headline. You wouldn't write something like, "Bad, modern-day pirates hijack ship," even though you want to convey how serious the issue is. Basically, you have to be very aware of how all of your headlines will be interpreted by your readers.

Marguerite Day said...

Sue makes a very good point that, as editors, we have to watch the words we use and the connotations those words bring with them. The words we use for headlines need to accurately reflect the tone of the story.

However, I also think, as headline writers, we need to use words that catch readers' attention. In this case, "pirates" reflects the actions of the people as well as catches the readers' attention. It also tells a lot about the story without using a lot of words. When I hear the word pirate, I automatically know the action is out in a body of water, most likely the ocean, and people are stealing things from other ships. I think it would be OK to use the words pirates in this case.

But if it really bothers you, English has synonyms for everything. I think hijackers would also be appropriate.